1918] on Poetry and Modern Life 321 



superfluonslv joined together by dull passages. But it is a sound 

 instinct in mankind, and not a mere superstition, which accords the 

 highest rank in works of human art to masterpieces on a large scale. 

 We demand not only fitful inspiration, but that full deployment of 

 creative faculty which can handle the most complex elements, throw 

 them into living shape, and, transcending private experience, project 

 a fresh world before our eyes. Only by mastery of the complex, by 

 intuitive grasp and control of the reality outside himself, is the master 

 fully shown. What has gone to the making of a work of art comes 

 out of it. And the great masterpieces radiate an energy of the spirit 

 w^hich is a perpetual exhilaration and expansion for our minds. AVho 

 can read "' Paradise Lost" and not feel dilated as with a new sense of 

 the powers of human nature ? 



Well, let us imagine a poet of our day contemplating the attempt 

 to embody all that life means for him in a great objective work. He 

 must find a medium ; he must choose a subject. 



Mr. Bradley, in one of his Oxford Lectures, di>.cussing this very 

 question of the long poem in modern times, suggests several reasons 

 for the frequency of its failure. One is this. The modern mind is 

 not content with a narrative of events, however splendid and moviuL- ; 

 it craves for some profounder interpretation of a world which grows 

 ever more complex and limitless to our understanding. The trend 

 is inward. We are interested in the movement of the souls and 

 minds of men, in spiritual victory and catastrophe, rather than in 

 action for its own sake. It is Hamlet himself, the subtle workings of 

 his mind and its reaction on his will, who enthrals one generation after 

 another ; not the external story, with its murders and violences. Yet it 

 would seem hardly necessary to point out that it is through his actions 

 that Hamlet reveals himself ; and what we really demand is that 

 action should be significant, should be the inevitable issue of charac- 

 ter in movement. If action is suppressed and neglected in a long 

 poem, the salient outlines become flat and tame. There is a loss of 

 vital energy, of concrete definition ; the sense of mass, the sense 

 of movement, are alike missing. Poems like the "Excursion" or 

 " Paracelsus " show in their different ways how much reflection and 

 analysis may overweight the poet and fatigue the reader. 



I agree with Mr. Bradley that this preoccupation with the inner 

 life is one main cause of the rarity of success in modern poems on 

 the great scale. I agree also with most of what he says about 

 another cause. That is the modern poet's freedom, his unchartered 

 freedom. We live in an age when the history of the world and the 

 surface of this planet hive been explored and made known in a way 

 that hitherto has been impossible. To a poet seeking a subject all 

 times and countries are open. He has but to choose. Yet this 

 necessity of choice, this unlimited field, how baffling and distracting 

 they can be ! For he feels instinctively that he must choose some 

 subject at once related to his own nature, and to the lives of those 



