Excerpt from The Realm of Poetry: An Introduction This little book does not aspire to be a learned treatise on the history of poetry or on the science of poetics, such as the Saintsburys and Bradleys and Gummeres have given us. Nor, on the other hand, is it a school manual, containing all that is useful for the passing of examinations. It was written in the hope of making its readers sharers in an experience which has been for the writer, as for countless other men, a source of unfeigned delight. Were I writing about flowers I might make a contribution to natural science, or compile a useful manual of botany for the class-room, or write a book meant simply to impart a joy. In a sense it is this last kind of book that I have tried to write about poetry. I say 'in a sense, ' for a book about the appreciation of poetry must needs differ widely from a book about the love of flowers, and that for the good reason that poetry's appeal is to other and higher faculties than can be reached by the shapes and colours of flowers. If a book about the appreciation of poetry is to achieve its aim it must justify poetry to these higher faculties. Appreciation must grow out of knowledge and understanding.

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