What We Have To Do

That The Mere Matter Of A Poem, For Instance--its Subject, Its Given Incidents Or Situation; That The Mere Matter Of A Picture--the Actual Circumstances Of An Event, The Actual Topography Of A Landscape--should Be Nothing Without The Form, The Spirit Of The Handling, That This Form, This Mode Of Handling, Should Become An End In Itself, Should Penetrate Every Part Of The Matter;mthis Is What All Art Constantly Strives After, And Achieves In Different Degrees.

In A Sense It Might Even Be Said That Our Failure Is To Form Habits: For, After All, Habit Is Relative To A Stereotyped World, And Meantime It Is Only The Roughness Of The Eye That Makes Two Persons, Things, Situations, Seem Alike.

Poetry, At All Times, Exercises Two Distinct Functions: It May Reveal, It May Unveil To Every Eye, The Ideal Aspects Of Common Thingsor It May Actually Add To The Number Of Motives Poetic And Uncommon In Themselves, By The Imaginative Creation Of Things That Are Ideal From Their Very Birth.

Every Moment Some Form Grows Perfect In Hand Or Face; Some Tone On The Hills Or The Sea Is Choicer Than The Rest; Some Mood Of Passion Or Insight Or Intellectual Excitement Is Irresistibly Real And Attractive For Us - For That Moment Only.

The Various Forms Of Intellectual Activity Which Together Make Up The Culture Of An Age, Move For The Most Part From Different Starting-points, And By Unconnected Roads.