312 Mr. Laurence Binyon [May 31, 



But even before the war there was a stir and movement in the poetry 

 of the day, a vigorous new productiveness, which seemed to mark the 

 coming of a new era in our loner poetic history. And in this move- 

 ment, with its ferment and restlessness, there is an effort to relate 

 poetry more nearly to the life of our own time. Whether poets make 

 this effort or not, there is always a large public to demand it of them. 

 You may remember Ruskin's complaint to Tennyson that he had not 

 chosen in his " Idylls of the King " a subject nearer to the interests 

 of his own time. That complaint, that demand, is heard now with 

 increasing frequency. It may l)e that this is in great part due to the 

 ever-increasing power of the newspaper Press. Journalists would like 

 all the world to become like themselves, for whom yesterday is already 

 the exhausted past. They clamour for actuality, for the thing which 

 thrills us on Saturday and is stale or forgotten by Monday. Such 

 cries, however vociferous, may leave us calm. And yet there is some- 

 thing both reasonable and instinctive Ijehind this demand, though it 

 is usually expressed so uniutelligently as to become false and foolish. 



The mistake made by journalists and those who are misled by 

 journalists is simply the mistake of assuming that contemporary life 

 consists only in its surface and appearance. Now it is obvious that 

 the world Ave live in has enormously changed in outward aspect and 

 in material conditions during the last hundred years. The discovery 

 and application of steam-power and electricity have brought remote 

 things near, have quickened the pace of existence, have changed the 

 face of the country, and created a world of machinery. In the last 

 ten years man has at last conquered the air and won a new sense of 

 mastery over the elements. And in these last four years who shall 

 compute the effect of the profound and vital changes in the world 

 and in ourselves — changes material, moral, spiritual — through Avhich 

 we have passed and are passing every day and every hour ? What 

 account is poetry to make of a life so different from anything the 

 world has yet seen .^ Might it not be plausible to claim that a new 

 kind of poetry should emerge, if it is to be an adequate expression of 

 this age and of its spirit ? How much tmth is there in this claim ? 

 And in what sense can poetry ^ e new ? 



These are the questions which I should like to ask you to consider 

 with me ; and let us try to approach them, as far as possible, without 

 prejudice. That is difficult, for Ave are all of us, I fancy, biassed by 

 our natures ; and while some cherish the great traditions of English 

 poetry so ardently that they are loth to accept innovations, others 

 are for ))oldly throwing over the past, shaking free from the tyranny 

 of the " dead hand " and striking out into the future. Still, let us 

 make the attempt ; also, let us consider the question from the 

 practical point of view — I mean from the point of view of the actual 

 wTiter. Those of us who have practised any art must have experi- 

 enced at one time or another the good offices of friends and acquaint- 

 ances who have come to them brimming over with an ideal subject 



