the beauty of mere sound and to
the obvious meaning, but in unity with them and so as expressive of the
poetic meaning of the whole.

It is always so in fine poetry. The value of versification, when it is
indissolubly fused with meaning, can hardly be exaggerated. The gift for
feeling it, even more perhaps than the gift for feeling the value of
style, is the _specific_ gift for poetry, as distinguished from other
arts. But versification, taken, as far as possible, all by itself, has a
very different worth. Some aesthetic worth it has; how much you may
experience by reading poetry in a language of which you do not
understand a syllable. The pleasure is quite appreciable, but it is not
great; nor in actual poetic experience do you meet with it, as such, at
all. For, I repeat, it is not _added_ to the pleasure of the meaning
when you read poetry that you do understand: by some mystery the music
is then the music _of_ the meaning, and the two are one. However fond of
versification you might be, you would tire very soon of reading verses
in Chinese; and before long of reading Virgil and Dante if you were
ignorant of their languages. But take the music as it is _in_ the poem,
and there is a marvellous change. Now

It gives a very echo to the seat
Where Love is throned;

or "carries far into your heart," almost like music itself, the sound

Of old, unhappy, far-off things
And battles long ago.

What then is to be said of the following sentence of the critic quoted
before: "But when any one who knows what poetry is reads--

Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence,

he sees that, quite independently of the meaning, ... there is one note
added to the articulate music of the world--a note that never will leave
off resounding till the eternal silence itself gulfs it?" I must think
that the writer is deceiving himself. For I could quite understand his
enthusiasm, if it were an enthusiasm for the music of the meaning; but
as for the music, "quite independently of the meaning," so far as I can
hear it thus (and I doubt if any one who knows English can quite do so),
I find it gives some pleasure, but only a trifling pleasure. And indeed
I venture to doubt whether, considered as mere sound, the words are at
all exceptionally beautiful, as Virgil's line certainly is.

When poetry answers to its idea and is purely or almost purely poetic,
we find the identity of form and content; and the deg