means nothing of the kind; but it does
verily seem as if.' The reader will find, by examining the rest of the
poem, that Ellen's character is throughout consistent in this clear
though passionate strength.[34]

[34] I cannot quit this subject without giving two more
instances, both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I
have just come upon, in _Maud_:

For a great speculation had fail'd;
And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair;
And out he walk'd, when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd,
And the _flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove, thro'
the air_.

There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
_The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near!'
And the white rose weeps, 'She is late.'
The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear!'
And the lily whispers, 'I wait.'_

It is, I hope, now made clear to the reader in all respects that the
pathetic fallacy is powerful only so far as it is pathetic, feeble so
far as it is fallacious, and, therefore, that the dominion of Truth is
entire, over this, as over every other natural and just state of the
human mind.

JOHN STUART MILL

1806-1873

THOUGHTS ON POETRY AND ITS VARIETIES (1859)

I

It has often been asked, What is Poetry? And many and various are the
answers which have been returned. The vulgarest of all--one with which
no person possessed of the faculties to which Poetry addresses itself
can ever have been satisfied--is that which confounds poetry with
metrical composition: yet to this wretched mockery of a definition,
many have been led back, by the failure of all their attempts to find
any other that would distinguish what they have been accustomed to
call poetry, from much which they have known only under other names.

That, however, the word 'poetry' imports something quite peculiar in
its nature, something which may exist in what is called prose as well
as in verse, something which does not even require the instrument of
words, but can speak through the other audible symbols called musical
sounds, and even through the visible ones which are the language of
sculpture, painting, and architecture; all this, we believe, is and
must be felt, though perhaps indistinctly, by all upon whom poetry in
any of its shapes produces any impression beyond that of tickli