A Columbia professor sets out to show that poetry, politics and religion flower from one root in the human spirit. He begins on a stormy night above the fishing village of Taormina in Sicily, moves to a full-length defence of poetry in the tradition of Sidney and Shelley, then to an essay on democracy, and ends with a meditative piece called The Ride.
Graceful idealist criticism from 1899 for readers who care about why poetry matters. Download the free EPUB.