Check out this sentence:
Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.
Is it saying "poetry is an emotion in a measure? Emotion will come from you naturally, and no need to labor for it. On the other hand, the measure comes only through work. You gotta work hard to get it?
There is nothing particularly ‘recondite’ about this little epigram; the terms Hardy employs, nature, art, measure, are pretty ordinary. But you must take care when you consult your dictionary to look for definitions relevant to the discussion of poetry; and you must keep in mind that Hardy, as a poet, maintains different senses of his words in provocative and fertile tension.
Definitions from Oxford Online Dictionaries
ART:
def 1: The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination [...] producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
def 4: A skill at doing a specified thing, typically one acquired through practice.
NATURE:
def 1: The phenomena of the physical world collectively [...] as opposed to humans or human creations.
def 2.1: The innate or essential qualities or character of a person ...
MEASURE:
verb, def 2: Consider (one’s words or actions) carefully.
noun, def 4: The rhythm of a piece of poetry or a piece of music.
Hardy's epigram alludes to critical questions which have been debated for centuries, sometimes millennia: Does a work of art ‘imitate nature’ or ‘transform nature’ or ‘create a second nature’? Is the poet’s ability an innate gift or an acquired skill? Should poetry employ a distinct diction and meter (‘measure’) or should it emulate the lexicon and rhythms of natural speech? Is poetry a spontaneous overflow of emotion into language or is it a contrived and disciplined—‘measured’—examination of emotion?
Hardy in effect dismisses the Either/Or debates and insists that poetry is Both/And. The poet must consult his ‘natural’ (that is, authentic) emotion as it is spontaneously expressed; but he must also shape a true recreation of that emotion through his acquired ‘artistic’ skill.
That’s a lot to pack into one short sentence, and I’ve barely scratched the surface. But that’s how poets think—and linguists.
