Reason And Beauty : Large Print (Paperback)

The distinction between prose and verse has long been accepted; the distinction between prose and poetry has often been discussed. The two lines of demarcation have not been allowed to coincide. It is a habit of our easier culture to say that poetry can be written in prose, except that since the nineties 'prose-poems' have gone a little out of fashion. Passages from Sir Thomas Browne or Traherne or Ruskin are quoted as defining an exaltation which is one with poetic exaltation; and even passages of a less exalted but more simple or tender kind in Hardy or Alice Meynell are gathered under the same heading. 'Poetry can be written in prose'; and only the uneducated childlike mind is allowed to suppose that the pattern of lines makes any difference. None of us are willing to acknowledge ourselves mere babes in culture and therefore we believe all this and repeat it. Certainly when in years we were children, before we knew that culture existed, we recognized poetry by its lines. A poetry book was one in which the printing did not go straight on, covering the whole page, but stopped short and began again, probably with a capital letter. All printing of that recognizable kind was poetry; we knew nothing of the sad distinction between poetry and verse. But then, as we grew older, they robbed us of our simplicity. There was verse which was not poetry; well, that was, after all, only a difference in quality which the unfortunate young discover to exist-semper, ubique, in omnibus. But then there was prose which was poetry. And that instruction, though no doubt it gave some prose a title to which it had at least a partial claim, left a sadness behind. Poetry was no longer to be known by its lines; the mere magical look of the thing meant nothing. But why then write in lines?