A Study

A Study, A great poet is no mere writer of verses. He is a creator of life and superlife and a revealer of the ideal gleaming through the real, of the Divine shining through Nature and man. He appears to be a dreamer of dreams, but in reality, he is a denizen of a world which is more real and bright and joyous than ours. He is “a priest to us all, of the wonder and bloom of the world.” He is an explosive force who often breaks up the bad old world to build a brave new world. In a famous lyric Arthur O’Shanghnessy says:We are music makersAnd the dreamers of the dreams,Wandering by lone sea-breakersAnd sitting by desolate streams;World-losers and world-forsakersOn whom the pale moon gleams;And yet we are the movers and shakersOf the world for ever, it seems.It is thus true that poets, while seeming to be gazing away from the real towards the ideal, are really helping to release the ideal from within the real and to build the Kingdom of God upon the common earth. As Shelley says in a famous passage in The Defence of Poetry:“Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought.”“Poetry is the record of the best and the happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. Poetry reanimates the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world.”“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended ins-piration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”Dr. Shuddhananda Bharati says in equally felicitous terms: “Poets are harbingers of the New Dawn, Koils of Renaissance, awakeners of new life in mankind and eye-openers of humanity. Poets are the sculptors of civilisation.”“True poetry is a mantra of the Real, dynamic song-thrill of Soul-Bliss. It is an immortal blossom of Divine communion which breathes with the aroma of cosmic beauty and Nature’s ecstasy. The true poet is poetry itself. He is the muse of Nature and the messenger of God in her heart. The poet’s vision is far above the eyesight and the mind’s vision. It is the soul’s vision of the ensouled Divine. It gushes out of the inner fountain of bliss and flows into an ecstasy of beauty, emotion and rhythmic expression.” Swamiji says further in his Seer-Poet:“Poetry is the art of arts. The ear enjoys music, the eye painting and dancing. But something deeper is required to enjoy real poetry. The head, the heart and the soul must go together to live within oneself what the poet has embodied in his verse. Poetry is not an array of words set to a metrical beat. Poetry is a great formative power. It reveals the “One“ in Man, Nature, and the universe of beings. The real poet is a messenger of truth and a mediator between life and the Spirit. Editons ASSA, Christian Piaget