1918] on Poetry and Modern Life 313 



which thej have discovered — " just the thing for you," as they say — 

 which they want you to turn into a poem or a picture. But nine 

 times out of ten the proffered subject, which seems to our friends so 

 suitable, is one wiiich, if they had any practical experience, they 

 would know to be useless. 



Not so very long ago there was a time when certain leaders 

 of thought looked forward, I imagine, in their hearts to the speedy 

 coming of an age when poetry should altogether be improved off the 

 earth. Poetry in this view was a pleasing but useless kind of decora- 

 tion, valued up to a certain stage in human development, but without 

 value for the fully-developed race, quit of all superstitions, and living 

 in the full day of scientific knowledge. Herbert Spencer, in his book 

 on education, notes how the savage prefers decoration to utility, and 

 he pours out his scorn, if I remember rightly, on the absurd iuiport- 

 ance still given in modern education to the Greek mythology com- 

 pared with the deplorable lack of instruction in the interior economy 

 of the body. To minds of his temper and training it may well seem 

 ridiculous and lamentable that a professedly educated person should 

 know about the Labours of Hercules— so little calculated to equip 

 him for the battle of life— and be ignorant about the labours — so 

 much more interesting and beneficent — of the gastric juices. 



I am far from meaning to hint that, liowever shallow the appeal 

 to utility may be, the prevalent ignorance of natural science is not 

 deplorable. It should surely be a part of humane education that we 

 should be taught something at least about the universe we live in, 

 what things are made of, the laws by which they subsist, and the 

 perpetual transformations of matter. Tiiese things are not antago- 

 nistic to poetry ; on the contrary, they feed the springs of poetic 

 thought and contain the elements of what may well be an increasing 

 inspiration in the poetry of the future, not perhaps as direct themes, 

 but indirectly by widening and deepening our conceptions of the 

 world. But no less would I oppose the notion that the myths of 

 mankind, and especially the pregnant myths of Greece, are mere 

 lumber and decaying matter— as Carlyle picturesquely described 

 them, " innumerable dead dogs upon a dunghill." Many of us are 

 prejudiced against such subjects as themes for poetry because they 

 have a sort of inherited and unfair prestige, and also because we 

 incline to think them exhausted ; we are tired of nymphs and heroes. 

 And then a poet like Keats arises, who sees those old stories all fresh, 

 and draws from them new meaning and new beauty. Or, again, in 

 our own day, another poet, Mr. Sturge Moore, in the " Rout of the 

 Amazons " and " The Centaur's Booty," takes up subjects which seem 

 as remote as they well could be, and yet makes them relevant to life 

 and in a way contemporary with ourselves. 



If anyone supposed that poetry, and the desire for poetry, were 

 obsolete in the modern world, the war should have undeceived him. 

 Deep emotions craved for expression, and the wish to have those 



