INTRODUCTION
I
THE best poetry is always about the earth itself and all the strange and lovely things that compose and inhabit it. When a 'great poet' sets himself the task of some 'big theme,' he needs only to hold, as it were, a magnifying glass to the earth. We who are born and live here like very much to imagine other worlds, and we have even mentally constructed such another in which to exist after dying on this one; but we were careful to make it a glorified version of our own earth, with everything we most love here intensified and improved to the utmost stretch of human imagination.
To each man his 'best poetry' is that which he is able most to enjoy. The first object of poetry is to give pleasure. Pleasure is various, but it cannot exist where the emotions or the imagination have not been powerfully stirred. Whether it be called sensual or intellectual, pleasure cannot be willed. It is impossible to feel happy because one wants to feel happy,
5
