It may be a quite
wholesome pleasure, but it is not the high aesthetic pleasure which the
people who experience it generally believe to be the richest and most vivid
of all pleasures because it is experienced by a mental state that is more
eager and masterful than any other. Nor is our judgment acute when we
praise a poet's work because it chimes with unexpected precision to some
particular belief or experience of our own or because it directs us by
suggestion to something dear to our personal affections. Again the poet is
giving us delight, but not the delight of poetry. We have to consider this
alone--the poet has something to say: does he say it in the best words in
the best order? By that, and by that alone, is he to be judged.
For it is to be remembered that this achievement of the best words in the
best order is, perhaps, the rarest to which man can reach, implying as it
does a coincidence of unfettered imaginative ecstasy with superb mental
poise. The poet's perfect expression is the token of a perfect experience;
what he says in the best possible way he has felt in the best possible way,
that is, completely.
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