ceremonial character

English poetry too has had its ceremonial words, different at different epochs; but the tendency in English poetry has been, at recurrent intervals, to make a furious attack upon them: to rout them out and throw them on the scrap-heap, so that poetry should heighten and irradiate the ordinary language of men. Nevertheless, the ceremonial character of poetry remains, and must remain. Even when it uses the commonest words, it does not speak commonly….One cannot read poetry as one glances over a paragraph in the newspaper; it does not, as it were, sit down to the tea-table with us. Though it comes home to us, like nothing else, though it tells of human joy and grief

     in widest commonalty spread,

it nevertheless requires a certain preparation of the mind, however unassuming. It is in the world, but not of the world.

—Aubrey de Selincourt, On Reading Poetry (Phoenix House Ltd, 1952), 15-16

[The line “in widest commonalty spread,” is by Wordsworth. Aubrey de Selincourt quotes G. F. Bradley as saying: “Poetry is in the world, but not of the world.” I cannot identify G. F. Bradley at this time.]