Feinberg/Whitman  Literary File Prose  "What is Poetry?" (undated). A. Ms. note on 
Box 36   Folder 67                                                               holograph of George D Prentice

                                                                                                           

[ Return? this to W W]
What is Poetry?  The
answer to this difficult question by the
late George D. Prentice is as follows:
A smile - a tear - a glory - a longing
after the things of Eternity.  It lives
in all created existence, in Man, and
every object that surrounds him.  There
is Poetry in the gentle influence of love
& affection, in the quiet brooding of the
soul over the memories of early years,
& in the thoughts of that glory which
chains our Spirits to the gates of Paradise.
There is Poetry too in the Harmonies
of Nature It glitters on the
wave, the rainbow, the lightning & in
the stars.  Its cadence is heard in
cataract, & in the thunder - Its tones go
sweetly up from the thousand-voiced
harp of the mind - the rivulet, the forest,
and the cloud & sky go floating
over us to the music of its melodies
There is not a moonlight ray that comes
down upon the stream, or hill, not a breeze
calling from its blue air-throne to thebirds of the summer valley, or sounding
through the midnight-rains its low
and mournful dirge over the perishing
flowers of spring, - not a cloud bathing
itself like an angel vision in 
the rose-blush of autumn-twilight,
nor a rock glowing in the yellow-
star-light, as if dreaming of Eden-
Land, but is full of the beautiful
influence of Poetry.  It is the soul
of Being.  The Earth and the Heavens
are quickened by its spirit, and
the great deep in tempest & in calm
is but its accent and mysterious
working.
George D. Prentice
[For] poetry says Coleridge is the blossom and
the fragrance of all human knowledge,
human thoughts, human
passions, emotions, language.
Coleridge