It is probably a fact that of all the volumes of poetry in the world, not one in a hundred is read. It would be almost impossible to read through from beginning to end the complete works of any well known poet, and nothing could be more foolish than to attempt to do so. Yet the average owner of a volume of poetry cannot think of anything else to do with it except let it alone, and generally chooses the latter alternative. A poem is not like a story. One reads a story, enjoys it, and lays it aside. Few would care to read even the best novel more than once, or at most two or three times at widely separated intervals. A poem, on the other hand, cannot be understood or truly enjoyed even by the most cultivated until it has been read several times. In fact one reads a poem for quite a different purpose from that which leads one to read a story. A poem is more like a piece of music: one reads it when one wishes to be put into the mood which the poem or the music is intended to produce. The favourite mood produces happiness, and when we wish that kind of happiness we turn to the work of art which is able to produce it in us. Now, evidently it is not every poet whose moods are like our own. It is true that we may wish to cultivate moods not natural to us; but there is a distinct limit even to these. It follows, therefore, that there are not many poets we will wish to study, or even to read more than once; and there are but few poems even of the poets we like which will have that perfect effect on us which will make us wish to repeat it often. If one were asked to suggest the surest way to acquire a liking for poetry and a knowledge of it, the following would probably be the method suggested: First, find one good poem that one could really like and read more than once with pleasure. There are few of us who could not name such a poem at once; but many of us go no farther. Having chosen the first poem, one has thereby made choice of the first poet, a poet whose moods are in accord with one’s own and whom one is likely to be able to learn to like. Unless we can start with a liking, and proceed to another liking, we are not likely to go very far. While one likes a poet rather than poems, when one’s taste is fully trained, the most successful readers of poetry know a poet by relatively few poems. One cannot read many poems many times, and as we cannot appreciate any poetry fully that we do not read many times, we must make a selection. Indeed we shall find that there are but few poems of any poet that produce in us the desired mood. For us, all the other poems are more or less failures, at least more or less imperfect. So the first principle in the successful reading of poetry is to select most rigidly.