...which has echoed down the decades as the implicit credo of many American departments of English, says: "The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry,...goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay," he goes on to make it clear that poetry is a "stay" just because it is detached from the question of...

...when the highest values devalue themselves and come to nothing as their transcendent base dissolves:17 "There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an...received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve." "I am nothing and very probably never shall be anything," said Arnold in one of the letters to Clough.18...

...more generally) would "replace" "most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy," because there "is not a creed which is not shaken, not an...accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable," he seems to have been more interested in the bearing of Christianity, on conduct, in its ethical dimensions,...

...coherence, spiritual solace, and moral guidance that religion had formerly supplied. For Arnold, therefore, "the future of poetry is immense, because in poetry,...goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay." Poetry becomes all the more important precisely because in the present age "there is not a creed which...

...takes on crucial importance. "The future of poetry is immense," Arnold writes in the same passage, "because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high...goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay." The study of poetry can be of major value in an age of generalized doubt, but not as an end in itself....

...find, ... as time goes on and as other helps fail, its consolation and stay" in poetry, given that "there is not a creed which is not shaken, not an...received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve." His ideas also make plain the distinction between a Romantic "religion" of art, which forms the genetic...

..."old beliefs have dissolved" (QC, 71) Dewey knew no less than did the Arnold of "The Study of Poetry" ("not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable" [CPW, 9:161]), but that does not prevent the desire for "standards, principles, rules." Like Arnold,...

...sacralize poetry, as we can see in the famous passage about the future of poetry, which I cite again. The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry,...which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and...

...commitment—a commitment transcending the ethical—that Kierkegaard considered crucial to Christianity. "There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an...accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable," Arnold wrote. "More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life...

..."feelings" above by quoting from Matthew Arnold's famous "The Study of Poetry" that begins as follows. The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry,...which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and...