It will be best to begin by asking ‘What _kind of a thing_, in the widest sense, is poetry?’ When we have answered this we shall be ready to ask ‘How can we use and misuse it?’ and ‘What reasons are there for thinking it valuable?’ Let us take an experience, ten minutes of a person’s life, and describe it in broad outline. It is now possible to indicate its general structure, to point out what is important in it, what trivial and accessory, which features depend upon which, how it has arisen, and how it is probably going to influence his future experience. There are, of course, wide gaps in this description, none the less it _is_ at last possible to understand in general how the mind works in an experience, and what sort of stream of events the experience is. A poem, let us say Wordsworth’s _Westminster Bridge_ sonnet, is such an experience, it is the experience the right kind of reader has when he peruses the verses. And the first step to an understanding of the place and future of poetry in human affairs is to see what the general structure of such an experience is. Let us begin by reading it very slowly, preferably aloud, giving every syllable time to make its full effect upon us. And let us read it experimentally, repeating it, varying our tone of voice until we are satisfied that we have caught its rhythm as well as we are able, and--whether our reading is such as to please other people or not--we ourselves at least are certain how it should ‘go.’ Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning: silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie Open to the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour valley, rock or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at its own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep And all that mighty heart is lying still! We may best make our analysis of the experience that arises through reading these lines from the surface inwards, to speak metaphorically. The surface is the impression of the printed words on the retina. This sets up an agitation which we must follow as it goes deeper and deeper. The first things to occur (if they do not, the rest of the experience will be gravely inadequate) are the sound of the words ‘in the mind’s ear’ and the feel of the words imaginarily spoken.[1] These together give the _full body_, as it were, to the words, and it is with the full bodies of words that the poet works, not with their printed signs. But many people lose nearly everything in poetry through these indispensable parts escaping them.