But there is another service that poetry, among all writing, best
renders to the general reader, _when he needs it_; a service
less obvious, but sometimes, I think, more important. Poetry
insures an extension of youth.
Men and women vary in their emotional susceptibility. Some go
through life always clouded, always dull, like a piece of glass
cut in semblance of a gem, that refracts no colors and is empty of
light. Others are vivid, impressionable, reacting to every
experience. Some of us are most aroused by contact with one
another. Interest awakens at the sound of a voice; we are most
alive when most with our kind. Others, like Thoreau, respond best
in solitude. The very thrush singing dimly in the hemlocks at
twilight moves them more powerfully than a cheer. A deep meadow
awave with headed grass, a solemn hill shouldering the sky, a
clear blue air washing over the pasture slopes and down among the
tree-tops of the valley, thrills them more than all the men in all
the streets of the world. It makes no difference. To every one,
dull and vivid, social and solitary, age brings its changes. We
may understand better, but the vividness is less, the emotions are
tamer.
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