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Book, page 221 / 276 likely to earn the world's ridicule by the deadly seriousness with which they take verse writing. If the object of his pursuit is a sport, the average poet is as little aware of it as is the athlete who suffers a nervous collapse before the big game of the season. But Plato's more significant statement is untouched. Is poetry an imitation of life? It depends, of course, upon how broadly we interpret the phrase, "imitation of life." In one sense almost every poet would say that Plato was right in characterizing poetry thus. The usual account of inspiration points to passive mirroring of life. Someone has said of the poet, As a lake Reflects the flower, tree, rock, and bending heaven, Shall he reflect our great humanity. [Footnote: Alexander Smith, _A Life Drama_.] And these lines are not false to the general view of the poet's function, but they leave us leeway to quarrel over the nature of the reflection mentioned, just as we quarrel over the exact connotations of Plato's and Aristotle's word, imitation. Even if we hold to the narrower meaning of imitation, there are a few poets who intimate that imitation alone is their aim in writing poetry. Denying that life has an ideal element, they take pains to mirror it, line for line, and blemish for blemish. How can they meet Plato's question as to their usefulness? If life is a hideous, meaningless thing, as they insinuate, it is not clear what merit can abide in a faithful reflection of it. Let us take the case of Robert Service, who prided himself upon the realism of his war poetry. [Footnote: See _Rhymes of a Red Cross Man_.] Perhaps his defense depends, more truly than he realized, upon the implication contained in his two lines, If there's good in war and crime, There may be in my bits of rhyme. [Footnote: See _Ibid_.] Yet the realist may find a sort of justification for himself; at least James Thomson, B.V., thinks he has found one for him. The most thoroughly hopeless exposition of the world's meaninglessness, in English poetry, is doubtless Thomson's _City of Dreadful Night_.
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