316 Mr. Laurence Binyon * [May 31, 



were varied enough in the themes they bandied ; but poetry is still 

 expanding its frontiers. It would be rash to assume that there is 

 any subject-matter which an adventurous poet of to-day would refuse 

 to handle. There is a determination abroad that poetry shall come 

 to grips with realities. And in this quest there is to be no fUnching 

 from tlie ugly, the horrible, the squalid. Literary historians of the 

 future may sr^e in this a consequence of the realism of the later 

 10th Century, itself a reflection from the rise to dominance in current 

 thought of natural science — the realism that first overflowed the 

 novel and now spreads to poetry. Whether this is true or not, we 

 find in many, though not all, of the poets of to-day a wish to deal 

 with things as they are, and when the thing is, to say the word. 

 There is a decided wish to avoid the suave, the soft, the pretty. 

 Ugly and prosaic subjects will seem to be deliberately chosen, as in 

 some of the earlier work of Rupert Brooke. This may sometimes 

 be a mere reaction from convention, or a fashion; but as a positive 

 tendency it is a symptom of life and vigour. Let us not condemn 

 a poem for having a 5-ubject we think ugly. The sole question is, 

 Does it remain ugly, does it remain mere fact, or has the poet been 

 able to transmute it so that it is related to the rest of life, seen in 

 the world, not of fact, but of ideas ? The victory is difficult, but 

 difficulty attracts an artist. 



Mr. Hardy, though an honoured veteran, is a poet who is modern 

 of the moderns. And if we are curious to see how unpromising 

 subjects, as far removed as possible from traditional sentiment, can 

 be transmuted into poetry, not always felicitous perhaps, but always 

 impressive because born of intense sincerity and coloured by a very 

 personal temperament, it is to Mr. Hardy's poems we shall turn. 



The danger in this extension of the themes of poetry lies in this : 

 Poetry is the natural expression of an intense emotion : and if 

 themes, not inevitably evoking emotion, are attacked solely from a 

 desire to handle reality, then the inner life of the poem flags, it loses 

 spontaneous glow, and we feel that poetry is usurping the place of 

 prose. But here we must distinguish. What evokes no emotion 

 from the ordinary man may evoke deep feeling from the poet. That 

 is his opportunity to win for beauty what 'had been thought outcast, 

 common and unclean. And I do not think it can be justly said that 

 the poetry of our day is realistic in any narrow or stupid sense. 

 Mr. Masefield, Mr. Wilfrid Gibson, Rupert Brooke, Mr. Gordon 

 Bottomley, and others now writing have handled themes of common, 

 hard and ugly experience, or introduced realities called squalid into 

 poetry. They have not always been successful ; but one cannot 

 accuse them of lacking emotional impulse or imaginative mood. 



There are other poets who do not choose such themes ; but even 

 in those who keep more to the traditionally poetic world you will 

 find a change in the mood of approach, in diction, and in versifica- 

 tion. What you will notice is a general distaste for what is called 



