It is not easy to discover whence arose the popular feeling of the insignificance of poetry. It is allied to the materialistic undervaluing of all art, and it is probably not unconnected with the ascetic idea that whatever ministers to earthly delight is a hindrance to progress toward the unseen life of another world. Something is to be attributed, no doubt, to the contempt bred by worthless imitations with which facile poetasters have afflicted a long-suffering world; but most of all is the want of an appreciation of the value of poetry to be attributed to the fact that men engrossed in literal and material concerns have not been able to appreciate remote consequences, or to comprehend the utterances of the masters who speak the language of the imagination. While the world in general, however, has been increasingly unsympathetic toward poetry, the sages have universally concurred in giving to it the highest place in the list of literary achievements. "Poetry," Emerson said, "is the only verity." The same thought is expanded in a passage from Mrs. Browning, in which she speaks of poets as --the only truth-tellers now left to God,-- The only speakers of essential truth, Opposed to relative, comparative, And temporal truths; the only holders by His sun-skirts, through conventual gray glooms; The only teachers who instruct mankind From just a shadow on a charnel wall To find man's veritable stature out, Erect, sublime,--the measure of a man. --_Aurora Leigh_ So Wordsworth:-- Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, it is the impassioned expression which is on the face of all science. It is needless, however, to multiply quotations. The world has never doubted the high respect which those who appreciate poetry have for the art. It is true also that however general at any time may have been the seeming or real neglect of poetry, the race has not failed to preserve its great poems. The prose of the past, no matter how great its wisdom, has never been able to take with succeeding generations the rank held by the masterpieces of the poets. Mankind has seemed not unlike one who affects to hold his jewels in little esteem, it may be, yet like the jewel owner it has guarded them with constant jealousy. The honor-roll of literature is the world's list of great poets. The student of literature is not long in discovering that his concern is far more largely with verse than with anything else that the wit of mankind has devised to write. However present neglect may at any time appear to show the contrary, the long-abiding regard of the race declares beyond peradventure that it counts poetry as most precious among all its intellectual treasures. XVII THE TEXTURE OF POETRY