Robert Bridges, ed. (1844–1930). The Spirit of Man: An Anthology. 1916.
From A Defence of Poetry
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
POETRY1 awakens and enlarges the mind by … a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world … The great secret of morals is Love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination … Poetry enlarges the circumference of the Imagination … [and] strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb.
