1918] on Poetry and Modern Life 315 



the di-:covery of America, and the French Revolution were events 

 which quickened and heightened imaginative emotion and the sense 

 of hfe, and so were a stirring influence on poetic minds. But it is 

 in the interior Hfe that poetrv springs ; it was the spiritual issues, 

 not the pageant of events, which moved Wordsworth so profoundly 

 in the time of our struggle with Xapoleon. And the spiritual issues 

 are permanent, not conditioned by transient circumstances ; they are 

 inherent in man's nature. That is why we turn to Wordsworth 

 to-day, and will turn to him again. 



AVe may discard, then, the journalistic cry that poets must take 

 their themes from the outward life about them. But if the world 

 has changed so greatly in our time, have these new elements affected 

 our interior life, the life of the spirit and the imagination out of 

 which poetry is born ? That is a question which it is extremely 

 difficult, without the due perspective, to assess. There is so much 

 that is imponderable, so much that eludes our probing. But we 

 can try and see what tendencies are asserting themselves in the 

 poetry of to-day ; what new inspirations, if any, are behind it. 



Change is the secret of life ; and with a new generation, showing 

 a remarkable abundance and variety of gift, a reaction from the 

 aims and methods of the last generation was inevitable. It may, 

 indeed, be maintained that this reaction, or progression, is wholly 

 literary in essence, and had nothing to do with changes in the spirit 

 of the age. I do not think that is true ; but certainly we have to 

 be on our guard against those numerous people who want to exploit 

 poetry in the interests of science, or religion, or democracy, or some 

 other C4use which, however noble or desirable, is not poetry. Such 

 people are apt to exaggerate the claims of the age, and also to attach 

 an irrelevant value to poems which happen to interest them for non- 

 poetic reasons. Yet it is true that poetry loses in sap and savour 

 when it is pursued as a cloistered activity and an esoteric dream. 

 x4.nd I think that we shall find that the tendencies of the day, 

 subtly, and perhaps often unconsciously, embody a desire to make 

 poetry an expression of contemporary life. 



The Victorian epoch closed a period in poetry which now returns 

 to conditions more like the conditions prevailing a century and more 

 ago, in the time of the Romantic Movement. But just as the 

 Victorian poetry was far more complex and varied than that of the 

 18th Century, so the reactions of our day are more complex than 

 the reaction of Wordsworth and Coleridge ; they cannot be summed 

 up as a single movement. We have to deal with a numerous com- 

 pany of poets, widely differing in gift and temperament. Yet 

 certain tendencies are manifest. 



Changes have appeared both in the content and form of poetry : 

 in choice of subject, in mood of approach, in diction and vocabulary, 

 in rhythm and metre. 



To begin with the question of subject-matter. The Victorians 



