There is great unanimity of opinion as to the connection of literary poetry in its origin with dance, music and song, an opinion that is wrong nevertheless. In fact, most phases of poetry neither have nor ever had anything in common with dancing or music or song.
Poetry such as we find in the great English verse or prose poets of the nineteenth century has little relation to dancing, music or singing. Take the Shakespearean plays, the tragedies of _Hamlet_ or _King Lear_, where we have philosophizing and descriptions of painful crises which are great poetry. A poet does not have to sing a great idea, nor dance to it, nor put it to music. Ibsen and Balzac are poets and yet they are far away from dancing, singing or music. Though most good singers are poets, one does not have to be a singer to be a poet. Then take great impassioned oratory or beautiful emotional word painting in prose or verse, or any idea bathed in feeling. They may all be poetry and need not be--in fact, by their nature, are not--related to dance, music and song.
An autobiographical verse poem like Wordsworth's _Prelude_, or a series of impassioned ideas like Lucretius's _Nature of Things_, or a novel in verse like _Aurora Leigh_ is not related to song, yet it is poetry in parts. (This does not mean that poetry is not the soul of music or dancing.)
There is nothing more amusing than to read the innumerable and contradictory theories about the origin of poetry. Many believe that the first poetry was pastoral poetry, since the shepherd's life was, after hunting, the first occupation appropriate and conducive to composing poetry. Scaliger, Fontenelle and Pope endorsed this view. Others believe that the original poetry was written to express man's religious emotions; his prayers and hymns to his gods are considered by many the first poetry. Again the communistic needs of the clans are supposed to have invited the poet to write. Celebration of tribal victories, praise of heroes, incitement to martial courage and revenge, the virtues of the clan, were supposed to be the first function of the poets. Epics and ballads are cited in proof of this. Again, satires and invectives are thought to be the first forms as they were used by the bards, who were also magicians and hurled them as potent forces against the enemy. Thomas Peacock believed eulogies constituted the first poetry of the human race. Then the proverb and parable have their devotees, as the first imaginative representation of the common thinking of the earliest people, and as the readiest to lend themselves to the use of verse patterns. One could go on naming various theories that have been advanced as to what kind of poetry is earliest; there is the poem which designates the awakening of a moral conscience; there is the mythical tale reciting the dream desires of the tribe; the song chanted at various labors and toilings of the common people; the chorus which served as an accompaniment to holiday celebrations and nature worship; the chanting of the first cantors or priests and the responses of the congregation; there are the ecstatic utterances of the earliest prophets, soothsayers and magicians; the admonitions of counselors and legislators; the personal grievances and complaints recited by those seeking redress before the assembly or chief; marriage hymns, love poems and elegies; all of these are separately cited as the original springs from which later poetry developed.