There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.
A. E. HousmanRead
I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The essence of poetry is elusive and cannot be easily defined, much like a dog instinctively recognizing a rat without being able to articulate it.
This quote suggests that poetry, much like instinctual understanding, resists formal definition. A. E. Housman compares the difficulty of defining poetry to a terrier's innate ability to find a rat; both are rooted in deeper, instinctual comprehension rather than straightforward explanation.
Themes
PoetryDefinitionInstinctArtLanguage
In practice
Example use cases
In a literary discussion about the nature of art, this quote illustrates the intangibility of artistic expression.
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And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
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Oh, 'tis jesting, dancing, drinking_x000D_ _x000D_ Spins the heavy world around.
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