In these days when the old civilisation is crumbling beneath our feet,
the thought of poetry crosses the mind like the dear memory of things
that have long since passed away. In our passionate desire for the new
era, it is difficult to refrain oneself from the commonplace practice of
speculating on the effects of warfare and of prophesying all manner of
novel rebirths. But it may be well for us to remember that the era
which has recently closed was itself marked by a mad idealisation of all
novelties. In the literary movements of the last decade --when, indeed,
any movement at all has been perceptible -- we have witnessed a
bewildering rise and fall of methods and ideals. We were captivated for
a time by the quest of the golden phrase and the accompanying
cultivation of exotic emotions; and then, wearying of the pretty and the
temperamental, we plunged into the bloodshot brutalities of naturalism.
From the smooth-flowing imitations of Tennyson and Swinburne, we passed
into a false freedom that had at its heart a repudiation of all law and
standards, for a parallel to which one turns instinctively to certain
recent developments in the political world. We may hope that the eager
search for novelty of form and subject may have its influence in
releasing us from our old bondage to the commonplace and in broadening
the scope of poetry; but we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that it
has at the same time completed that estrangement between the poet and
the general public which has been developing for half a century. The
great mass of the reading world, to whom the arts should minister, have
now forgotten that poetry is a consolation in times of doubt and peril,
a beacon, and "an ever-fixed mark" in a crazed and shifting world. Our
poetry --and I am speaking in particular of American poetry -- has been
centrifugal; our poets have broken up into smaller and ever smaller
groups. Individualism has triumphed.
To the general confusion, critics, if they may be said to have existed
at all, have added by their paltry conception of the art. They have
deemed it a sufficient denunciation of a poet to accuse him of imitating
his masters; as though the history of an art were rather a series of
violent rebellions than a growth and a progressive illumination. Not all
generations are privileged to see the working of a great creative
impulse, but the want, keen though it be, furnishes no reason for the
utter rejection of
A tremulous murmur from great days long dead.
But this fear of echoing the past may work us a yet greater misfortune.
In the rejection of the manner of an earlier epoch may be implicit also
the rejection of the very sources from which springs the life of the
fair art. Melody, and a love of the green earth, and a yearning for God
are of the very fabric of poetry, deny it who will. The Muses still
reign on Parnassus, wax the heathen never so furious. Poets who love
poetry better than their own fame in Grub Street will do well to
remember
The flame, the noble pageant of our life;
The burning seal that stamps man's high indenture
To vain attempt and most forlorn adventure;
Romance and purple seas, and toppling towns,
And the wind's valiance crying o'er the downs.
It is a poor business to find in such words only the illusions of youth
and a new enthusiasm. The desire for novelty, the passion for force and
dirt, and the hankering after freakishness of mood, which many have
attempted to substitute for the older and simpler things, are themselves
the best evidence of disillusion and jaded nerves. There is a weariness
and a disgust in our recent impatience with beauty which indicate too
clearly the exhaustion of our spiritual resources. It may well be that
the rebirth of poetry is to be manifest in a reappearance of the
obvious, --in a love of the sea and of the beauty of clouds, in the
adventure of death and the yet more amazing adventure of living, in a
vital love of colour, whether of the Orient or the drug-shop, in
childlike love of melody, and the cool cleansing of rain, in strange
faces and old memories. This, in the past, has been poetry, and this
will be poetry again. The singer who, out of a full heart, can offer to
the world his vision of its beauty, and out of a noble mind, his
conception of its destiny, will bestow upon his time the most precious
gift which we can now receive, the gift of his healing power.