truth, or a moral or social conception, when ecstatically stated; I can think of no higher literature of ecstasy than the imaginative utterance of great intellectual conceptions or impassioned expression of the love of justice. Shakespeare's line, "We are but such stuff as dreams are made of," is but a metaphysical theory emotionally put; Isaiah's rebuke to the corrupt rich is but a didactic saw, ecstatically delivered. Poetry finds its best material in metaphysical and ethical truths emotionally presented. Lofty ideas, however, and not commonplace deductions or conclusions are the best material for poetry.I recognize, then, as great poetry, all writings in which metaphysical
or scientific truth and the spirit of social service are ecstatically
formulated in prose, though I make no terms with dry didactic works that
pretend to be poetry. I see the workings of the intellect in a product
of the imagination and I try to show that logic and morality have not
been so hostile to the poetic faculty as they have been usually deemed.
At the same time I find that all poetry is a product or expression of
the unconscious. This is, then, not a book to teach the writing of poetry, but a study of
the poetic faculty in literature, not in rhetorical terms, but by an
appeal to the emotional life of the reader. It aims to point out the
best examples of the literature of ecstasy (or poetry) whether in verse
or prose. It shows that poetry is the very life of man's soul, that he
has always loved it, that he has in lieu of gratification of a good and
true poetic faculty often spent himself in cultivating substitutes for
it. What a superficial assumption that because people do not like verse
or read verse (especially trivial, lifeless, unhuman verse) they
therefore do not care for poetry! Furthermore, I try to relate the
poet's own literary revelation back to himself, just as the poet sought
to reveal his soul to the reader.
FOOTNOTES:[10:A] All prose has rhythm. I use the word "unrhythmical" merely to
designate such prose where the rhythm is not marked. There is no sharp
dividing line between rhythmical and unrhythmical prose.
CHAPTER IITHE PSYCHOLOGY OF ECSTASY
"The primal and danger-breeding gift of ecstasy," says Huneker in his
essay "Anarchs and Ecstasy" in _Bedouins_, "is bestowed upon few. Keats
had it, and Shelley; despite his passion, Byron missed it, as did the
austere Wordsworth--who had, perhaps, loftier compensations.
Swinburne had it from the first. Not Tennyson and Browning, only in
occasional exaltation. Like the cold devils of Felicien Rops, coiled in
frozen ecstasy, the winds of hell booming about them, the poetry of

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