1918] on Poetry and Modern Life 311 



to the age " is a comprehensive one ; it need not by any means imply 

 the actual portrayal of contemporary life, but it does imply the 

 embodying in some shape of the motive forces of contemporary life, 

 the ideas, the thoughts, the emotions actually stirring in the world 

 about us. And Shelley, in his own way, did this, though I fancy 

 he might have desired, had he felt himself possessed of the special 

 powers, to find a theme in the world of his own generation, without 

 recourse to the disguise of myth or symbolism. But natural instinct 

 impelled him on other paths ; and we do not wish it otherwise. 



The time into which Shelley was born was one of those periods 

 peculiarly apt to evoke the desire he expressed. It was a time not 

 only of tremendous events, involving all Europe— it was a time of 

 birth and change, of suddenly expanded horizons, of mental and 

 spiritual ferment, of immense tragedies, out of which rose immense 

 hopes. 



It is our lot to be living in a like period, though it has come 

 upon us abruptly, with the suddenness of an explosion. Shelley grew 

 up as a boy in a world already changed by the French Revolution, 

 with its profound reverberations. But for us, however sinister the 

 omens in the recent past, the incessant piling up of armaments, the 

 threats and the rattling of sabres, there was no real preparation. We 

 are in a world we had no dream of, four short years ago. Again we 

 share in immense tragedies, again we nourish immense hopes. The 

 horizon, for each of us, has infinitely expanded : for now not only 

 Europe but this whole planet is in the crucible fire. Events are on 

 the scale of prodigy and legend. The whole future of the world is 

 the issue at stake. Never was the will of man so imperiously called 

 on for its whole effort, to the last ounce of energy and endurance. 

 Elemental forces stream about us and carry us with them, whether we 

 will or no. 



With all its desolations, with all its bestial ferocities, with all its 

 miseries and overshadowing terrors, this is a time which has liberated 

 the spirit of poetry in mankind. When men live deepest and most 

 intensely, poetry is born. If horror and revolt at the nightmare 

 cruelties we witness are passionate, faith is passionate too. If we 

 have seen incredible destruction, we also will a new creation. If we 

 have laid waste, we have also sown. The very immensity of loss and 

 sacrifice drives us inward to the spirit. And it is the spirit of poetry 

 which transmutes our sorrows, which gives us vision of realities 

 transcending the actual scene, which lets us breathe the air of the 

 world of our desire, and expresses that desire for those in whom it 

 struggles for articulation. 



But with a time so overwhelming, with events following on each 

 other so breathlessly, and a world changing before our eyes, how, it 

 may well be asked, can poetry deal with the least adequacy ? I do 

 not think it can, and therefore I do not mean to dwell long on the 

 relation of poetry to the war. It is too near, poignant, and absorbing. 



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