[Ruskin, altered.]
[39] Ruskin later wrote: "It leaves out rhythm, which I now consider
a defect in said definition; otherwise good."
[40] Take, for instance, the beautiful stanza in the _Affliction of
Margaret_:
I look for ghosts, but none will force
Their way to me. 'T is falsely said
That ever there was intercourse
Between the living and the dead;
For, surely, then, I should have sight
Of him I wait for, day and night.
With love and longing infinite.
This we call Poetry, because it is invented or _made_ by the writer,
entering into the mind of a supposed person. Next, take an instance
of the actual feeling truly experienced and simply expressed by a
real person.
"Nothing surprised me more than a woman of Argentiere, whose
cottage I went into to ask for milk, as I came down from the
glacier of Argentiere, in the month of March, 1764. An epidemic
dysentery had prevailed in the village, and, a few months before,
had taken away from her, her father, her husband, and her
brothers, so that she was left alone, with three children in the
cradle. Her face had something noble in it, and its expression
bore the seal of a calm and profound sorrow. After having given me
milk, she asked me whence I came, and what I came there to do, so
early in the year.
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