Quotes, Advice from your fav writers & articles
"A Poet's Plea for Poetry" by Edwin Markham
Poetry gives noble grounds for noble emotion; it is the rhythmical expression of beauty- beauty that is the smile upon the face of truth. This means that it is not the utterance of mere fact; for the fact is never the whole truth. You get the truth in full circle only when you add the ideal, the beautiful, to cold barren fact. "How evenly the rock is stratified", said the great Tyndall upon first crossing the Alps. Here was a statement of undeniable fact; but it did not take in the sublimity of these titanic piles of rock and ice. Listen to the words of the poet Coleridge when he gazed upon the same stupendous scene: " Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven beneath the keen full moon?"
Here is a cry that gives is a sense of the wonder and terror of these peaks and chasms. Thus all good poetry rouses in the heart a sense of the mystery and the meaning of the universe. It enlarges the mind to help is understand the goodness and the glory of life. We are all here to taste the "more abundant life." We have only a brief span of years to get the feel or existence. In order to add to our limited experience in time, and in space, and in thought, we must turn to literature, and especially to poetry which is the most condensed and noble form in which men have recorded emotion and wisdom.
Poetry gives noble grounds for noble emotion; it is the rhythmical expression of beauty- beauty that is the smile upon the face of truth. This means that it is not the utterance of mere fact; for the fact is never the whole truth. You get the truth in full circle only when you add the ideal, the beautiful, to cold barren fact. "How evenly the rock is stratified", said the great Tyndall upon first crossing the Alps. Here was a statement of undeniable fact; but it did not take in the sublimity of these titanic piles of rock and ice. Listen to the words of the poet Coleridge when he gazed upon the same stupendous scene: " Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven beneath the keen full moon?"
Here is a cry that gives is a sense of the wonder and terror of these peaks and chasms. Thus all good poetry rouses in the heart a sense of the mystery and the meaning of the universe. It enlarges the mind to help is understand the goodness and the glory of life. We are all here to taste the "more abundant life." We have only a brief span of years to get the feel or existence. In order to add to our limited experience in time, and in space, and in thought, we must turn to literature, and especially to poetry which is the most condensed and noble form in which men have recorded emotion and wisdom.
