The world is of course aware by this time that a New Poetry has
arisen, and has asserted itself by the mouths of many loud-voiced
"boomers." It has been _Mr. Punch's_ good fortune to secure several
specimens of this new product, not through the intervention of middle
men, but from the manufacturers themselves. He proposes to publish
them for the benefit and enlightenment of his readers. But first a
word of warning. There are perhaps some who believe that a poem should
not only express high and noble thoughts, or recount great deeds, but
that it should do so in verse that is musical, cadenced, rhythmical,
instinct with grace, and reserved rather than boisterous. If any
such there be, let them know at once that they are hopelessly
old-fashioned. The New Poetry in its _highest_ expression banishes
form, regularity and rhythm, and treats rhyme with unexampled
barbarity. Here and there, it is true, rhymes get paired off quite
happily in the conventional manner, but directly afterwards you may
come upon a poor weak little rhyme who will cry in vain for his mate
through half a dozen interloping lines. Indeed, cases have been known
of rhymes that have been left on a sort of desert island of a verse,
and have never been fetched away. And sometimes when the lines have
got chopped very short, the rhymes have tumbled overboard altogether.
That is really what is meant by "impressionism" in poetry carried to
its highest excellence. There are, of course, other forms of the New
Poetry. There is the "blustering, hob-nailed" variety which clatters
up and down with immense noise, elbows you here, and kicks you there,
and if it finds a pardonable weakness strolling about in the middle of
the street, immediately knocks it down and tramples upon it. Then too
there is the "coarse, but manly" kind which swears by the great god,
Jingo, and keeps a large stock of spread eagles always ready to swoop
and tear without the least provocation.
However, _Mr. Punch_ may as well let his specimens speak for
themselves. Here, then, is