The poetry of Isaiah

Abstract

[Religion and Poetry are two most potent and far-reaching words. Without religion, though God would still he God, He would he banished from men’s thoughts of Him, and the earth, in other than a physical sense would be, as at the beginning, without form and void, Without Poetry, there would be a closing of vistas, a darkening of the heavens, a general shutting up within the limits of the material and the commonplace. The wise man of old declared that where there is no vision the people perish. If we think of humanity as one great body, the poets are, as it were, the eyes. If they were lacking, the blackness of thick darkness would settle down over a large part of life. Religion is man’s going out to God. Poetry, on the other hand, is man’s highest thought about himself - [the world he lives in, the problems which he has to face. It is inevitable that such thought should, sooner or later, lead to God; but in poetry God is not, as in religion the professed goal. Religion deals with the will, poetry quickens the emotions. Religion sets forth duties. It is the business of poetry to fill those duties with enthusiasm. The Prophet speaks to man for God. The poet, at his highest, speaks to God for men. Poetry becomes the handmaid, of Religion in broadening the horizon of men and bids them "look abroad I and see to what fair countries they are bound", The man |who cannot picture to himself what he has not directly before his eyes is bound to be, not only a heretic, but a bore. He is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils, or for whatever may chance to come his way. He is a roaring lion in the house, and a biting serpent in the path. He canonized prejudice, and deifies intellectual sluggishness. Against such a half-life, so dead a mind in an ungoverned body. Poetry lifts a warning voice. It calls up on men to think, and to think of something besides their own rights, and their neighbors’ errors.]