The Uses of Poetry

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Excerpt from The Uses of Poetry
I must at once confess that my title, 'The Uses of Poetry, ' is more or less deceptive. I intended to speak of that subject alone; but I found that I should only follow stumbling in the footprints of Sidney, Wordsworth, and Shelley if I attempted to describe the ways in which poetry enriches, purifies, and elevates life. At the same time I remembered, in more formal debates on poetry, so much confusion with respect to this notion of 'use, ' that I thought it would be more profitable, if much more dry, to endeavour to diminish it. And, even in that part of my address which really deals with one of the uses of poetry, my main object has still been the clarification of ideas.
When we ask of what use is poetry, we are regarding it solely as a means to an end. The question of its use or uses involves, therefore, the question of its end or ends; and on this much has been said both casually and in long discussions. We may find answers in the poets themselves. Pope's assertion that Shakespeare wrote 'for gain, not glory, ' might be taken to imply that a poet's choice is confined to these two ends. For Browning, on the other hand, 'his song' was his 'due to God, ' as, for Michael Angelo, the purpose of his art was the glory of God, and not of Michael Angelo. Keats confessed that he 'ever felt athirst for glory, ' but still he held that 'the great end of poetry' was to
be a friend
To soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man:
and that may be taken as a fair summary of the fuller statements of Wordsworth. Five aims have now been mentioned, and I will appeal to only one poet more. Burns declared that he had no aim at all:
Some rhyme a neighbour's name to lash;
Some rhyme for needfu' cash;
Some rhyme to court the country clash,
And raise a din;
For me, an aim I never fash -
I rhyme for fun.
On this and on the other testimony of the poets I may offer one remark. All poets rhyme for fun. What Burns meant by the phrase is explained by two lines in the preceding stanza:
Just now I've ta'en the fit o' rhyme,
My barmie noddle's working prime.
Every poet, I say, when he is writing, writes because his noddle is barmie ; in other words, because something is working in his head and wants to be expressed.
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