Page:Gleaning Of Tamil Literature.pdf/11

 Rewarded by the Muses, live for ay We may with storming showers be washed away No better-breathing winds with harmful blast Nor age, nor envy may them ever waste.”

Comparing the other arts with literature, Sir John Courthope said, “Poetry, working through languages, can free itself as painting and sculpture cannot, from the limitations of time and space, and can represent in words, what music cannot, a series of connected action”. He proceeds to say that poetry as a form of art helps the human mind to ennoble itself, enrich itself, widen itself and sets the mind to think of things that we heeded not. It chastens and subdues our passions and enables us to hear the still sad music of humanity. We are transported to a region, far away from the mundane world, with its sick hurry and divided aims.

It is not the personal aspect alone that poetry deals with; it deals with the harmony that exists between the personal and global aspects of life. To quote John Courthope “In every genuinely inspired poetical conception there are two elements of life, one universal, the other individual. The universal element is the idea of the subject, whatever it may be, as it exists in an undeveloped