An anthology of modern verse [antikvár]

ON POETRY AND THE MODERN MAN POETRY was born, like Beatrice, under a dancing star. There is in the nature of things a law of dancing which, at a crisis of great happiness or exaltation, sets the thoughts and the emotions leaping rhythmically to time. All men, even those who would be most surprised to be reckoned among the poets or the followers of the poets, are subject to this law. Every child is a poet from the age at which he learns to beat a silver spoon on the table in numbers. He likes to make not only a noise but a noise with something of the regularity of an echo. He coos with delight when he is taken on an elder's knee and is trotted up and down to the measure of " This is the way the ladies ride," with its steady advance of pace till the ultimate fury of the country clown's gallop. Later on, he himself trots gloriously in reins with bells that jingle in rhyme as he runs. His pleasure in swings, in sitting behind a horse, in travelling in a train, with its puff as regular as an uncle's watch and its wheels ix