320 Mr. Laurence Binyon [May 31, 



will return witb a new joj to tighter forms and cleanly ringing 

 metre, for it is by such change and reaction that an art lives. 



I have tried to sketch some of the broad tendencies of the time 

 in verse. If we ask whether the poetry of to-day expresses the vast 

 clianges that have come upon our world of late, it does not seem that 

 we can point to any direct relation of cause and effect, though we do 

 see that poetry is intensely alive and full of new adventure. But let 

 us beware of thinking that old themes or old measures — I do not say 

 of old rhythms within those measures — are easily exhausted. To a 

 poet it is a matter of wonder not that so much has been made of old 

 themes as that, comparatively, so little has been made. He is amazed 

 at the apathy and iiicuriousness of the average man, who needs some 

 grossly tangible portent like the coming of the steam-engine or the 

 aeroplane to rouse his sense of wonder, and then it is but for a day 

 or a week. With all our gains in knowledge and widening of interests 

 we turn back continually to certain central and primary interests 

 which have prompted spontaneous poetry since articulate speech first 

 brimmed over into song. The relation of mother to child, the passion 

 of love, death and birth, the passing of the seasons — such themes are 

 perennially new because of that greatest of wonders, the uniqueness of 

 human personality. Each brings to that old experience his own new- 

 ness, just as if no one had felt those feelings before. Among the 

 poems of our own day what is more delightful than the best of the 

 songs of Mr. W. H. Davies, who sings of his joy in the simplest sights 

 and sounds — birds and flowers and the rain on the leaves — with such 

 freshness tliat the commonest experience becomes a rare emotion ? 

 Or read Mr. Ralph Hodgson's " Song of Honour," and see on what 

 vibrating strings the mei'c sense of life intensely lived can woke a 

 new and memorable music. 



So far I have spoken of poetry as the expression of thought and 

 feeling ; but the real difficulties for the modern poet begin when, not 

 content with expressing his own thoughts and emotions, he aspires 

 to create on a large scale and sets out to rival the masterpieces of 

 the past. Since the 18th Century there has been no lack of great 

 poets in England and elsewhere ; but how few comparatively ate the 

 great poems ! Everyone must be conscious of a disparity l)etween 

 prodigality of gift and inadequacy of performance. I am of course 

 excluding lyric poetry, in which the modern period has been so 

 abundant and so splendid. I am speaking of poems on the grand 

 scale. England had a galaxy of great poets in the 19tli Century, 

 but none of them produced a work of the type I mean which we can 

 rank, in quality of success, with their smaller works. It may be 

 maintained that lyrical poetry, in the large sense of the word "lyrical," 

 is the kind most congenial to the modern spirit, and that this is a 

 wasted regret. Some may even subscribe to the heresy of Edgar Poe, 

 who contended that poetry could only be at its finest in short spurts 

 of inspiration, and that a long poem was only a series of small poems 



