1918] on Poetry and Modern Life 317 



" literary " ; a distaste for the acceptedlj beautiful word, a preference 

 for the expressive over the melodious. There is a desire to take in 

 more from contemporary speech, even what an older generation 

 would have despised as slang. It is a desire for new blood. You 

 will find this in such a poet as Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie, a poet 

 exuberant alike in intellect and in imagination, whose vocabulary is 

 singularly rich and vigorous. Along with an avoidance of the stock 

 metaphor and image there is also an avoidance of the mellifluous 

 rhythms in blank verse of wliich Tennyson was so finished a master. 

 Jusc as the poets of the Romantic Movement turned away from the 

 smoothness of the Popian couplet, the balance and neatness of 



" Know thou thyself; presume not God to scan, 

 The proper study of mankind is man," 



SO those now writing cannot return to the artifice of Tennysonian 

 rhythms like 



" The moan of doves in immemorial elms 

 And murmur of innumerable bees." 



Mr. Abercrombie, indeed, goes to excess in his passion for variety 

 and emphasis. So many of his lines are exceptional in rhythm that 

 it is hard to say what the rule or norm is to which they are ex- 

 ceptions. This is a weakness, but it is a fault of excess ; and the 

 brilliance, the vigour, and the frequent beauty of the verse are 

 undeniable. 



Mr. Yeats has little in common with most of the younger 

 generation : but in Mr. Yeats's verse also you will find a sedulous 

 sifting of diction and vocabulary, with the aim of getting rid of the 

 dead matter of poetic tradition and discovering/ fresh imagery. His 

 poetry aims at a kind of transfigured homeliness and intimacy of 

 speech. Conventions such as the placing of the epitliet after the 

 noun, and the inversion of the natural order of words, are scrupulously 

 rejected. " You " replaces " thou," and " it's " replaces " 'tis." Mr. 

 Yeats has arrived at a simplicity far removed from the baldness 

 which in Wordsworth's most defiant early pieces was still not free 

 from literary conventions, a simplicity sometimes over-conscious, but 

 at its best, as in the poem of " Baile and Ailinn," for instance, of an 

 exquisite economy, relieved by vivid images and subtly modulated 

 rhythm — a style that in its own kind seems to me well-nigh perfect. 

 The example this poet has given of delicate precision, his repudia- 

 tion of all the lazy artifices that come so easily to hand, and that 

 have been too frequent in our poetry, has had considerable influence. 

 If you prefer, we may suppose it symptomatic of the tendencies of 

 the time. 



And now to say something of changes in form. Here-, again, I 

 would plead for a discarding of prejudice in face of what is 

 unfamiliar and may seem undesirable. When we speak of form in 

 poetry, what do we mean ? Most people, I think, use the word as 



