It is always so in fine poetry. The value of versification, when it is
indissolubly fused with meaning, can hardly be exaggerated. The gift for
feeling it, even more perhaps than the gift for feeling the value of
diction, is the _specific_ gift for poetry, as distinguished from other
arts. But versification, taken, as far as possible, all by itself, has a
very different worth. Some aesthetic worth it has; how much, you may
experience by reading poetry in a language of which you do not
understand a syllable. The pleasure is quite appreciable, but it is not
great; nor in actual poetic experience do you meet with it, as such, at
all. For it is not _added_ to the pleasure of the meaning when you read
poetry that you do understand: by some mystery the music is then the
music _of_ the meaning, and the two are one. However fond of
versification you might be, you would tire very soon of reading verses
in Chinese; and before long of reading Virgil and Dante if you were
ignorant of their languages. But take the music as it is _in_ the poem,
and there is a marvellous change. Now