In all great poetry there is a kind of 'kenosis' of the understanding, a self-emptying of the tongue. Here language points away from itself to someth… - L. P. Jacks

There is nothing, . . . which sooner demoralises a man's intelligence than the discovery that he can make money by following the demand of a degenerate public taste.

The poet takes us straight into the presence of things. Not by explanation, but by indication; not by exhausting its qualities, but by suggesting its value he gives us the object, raising it from the mire where it lies trodden by the concepts of the understanding, freeing it from the entanglements of all that “the intellect perceives as if constituting its essence.” Thus exhibited, the object itself becomes the meeting-ground of the ages, a centre where millions of minds can enter together into possession of the common secret. It is true that language is here the instrument with which the fetters of language are broken. Words are the shifting detritus of the ages; and as glass is made out of the sand, so the poet makes windows for the soul out of the very substance by which it has been blinded and oppressed. In all great poetry there is a kind of “kenosis” of the understanding, a self-emptying of the tongue. Here language points away from itself to something greater than itself.

Are there not many Arts which, though speechless, express their meanings with perfect adequacy, with satisfaction to the recipient, and serve at the same time as a medium of communication between soul and soul?