[Music] is inarticulate poesy.
--
Tyrannick Love (1669), PrefaceJohn Dryden
In old days the plastic arts, music, and poesy were so germane to man in his totality that his Transcendence plainly manifest in them. ... What is to-day obvious to all is a decay in the essence of art. ... the opposition to man's true nature as man.
Karl Jaspers
The use of this feigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical: because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed providence: because true history representeth actions and events more ordinary, and less interchanged, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness, and more unexpected and alternative variations: so as it appeareth that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind into the nature of things.
Francis Bacon
O gracious God! how far have we
Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!John Dryden
O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed
That my own soul has to itself decreed.John Keats
The spirit of Poesy is the morning light, which makes the Statue of Memnon sound.
Novalis
Dryden, John
Du Bartas, Guillaume de Salluste
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