[PHELPS] THE POETRY OF TODAY 497 
Robert Bridges the Laureate may be placed in the first group, 
possibly as its honoured dean. He shares with R.L.S. the honour of 
having more poems than any of the rest in ‘Poems of To-day.” 
Indeed, the impression the Laureate gives, seen among his contem- 
_poraries of his school, makes the volume seem like a conspiracy to 
enthrone him. There is a chaste civility about his work and a cool 
perfection, a wrought excellence of phrasing that flatters us continually 
with the possibilitiesof our English tongue. This civility and perfection 
and excellence has merit and charm standing by itself but it becomes 
a specially pleasant and salutary influence after the hardness and 
cruelty of a Gibson or the riot of a Masefield. This poem is indicative 
of the Laureate: 
“T found to-day out walking 
The flower my love loves best. 
What, when I stooped to pluck it, 
Could dare my hand arrest ? 
Was it a snake lay curling 
About the root’s thick crown? 
Or did some hidden bramble 
Tear my hand reaching down ? 
There was no snake uncurling, 
And no thorn wounded me; 
’Twas my heart checked me, sighing 
She is beyond the sea. ”’ 
The fact may be but indicated that there exists a definite body 
of English poets,—and of course throughout this writing the discussion 
is limited to such—who may be best designated, when we feel under the 
necessity of designating them at all, as mystics and symbolists. 
Symbols are the landscape of the country in which mysticism dwells 
so these two go together. Our mystic poets are symbolists and our 
symbolists are mystics. William Bulter Yeats and “A.E.’’ (George 
Russell) are the names I shall mention. Both men are very practical 
mystics and very incorrigible dreamers. They distress by their 
vague subtleties even their would-be followers and they alienate the 
multitude. They are not “popular” poets. Yet they are immaculate 
craftsmen and their work leads us, if we give them the attendance of 
understanding learning which they demand, into that realm of the 
supersensible and the vaguely beautiful which, with its cloudy glories, 
is our home. Of the following two poems the first is by Yeats and the 
second by “A.E.” 
