APPENDIX A LIX 



write drama in the future and put himself to the supreme test in this 

 form of art. One cannot think of his figure now except in the hght 

 of tragic events that were hidden then, when there was no shadow, 

 only the eagerness of youth and the desire of life. 



Wilfred Owen too, and others of his group, inherited that touch 

 of intensity, but there was bitterness added and he had to bear the 

 shock of actual war which Brooke did not experience,^the horrors of 

 it and the futility. It is to be doubted whether such writers as Owen 

 or Sorley could have assumed or continued a position in post war 

 literature, whether they could have found subjects for the exercise 

 of such mordant talents. 



There was a tremendous activity of verse-writing during the war, 

 and the hope was often expressed that there was to be a renaissance 

 of poetry and our age was to be nobly expressed. But the war ceased ; 

 the multitude of war poets ceased to write; the artificial stimulus had 

 departed and they one and all found themselves without a subject. 

 Whatever technique they had acquired for the especial purpose of 

 creating horror or pity was unfitted for less violent matter. The 

 ideals which they had passionately upheld received the cold shoulder 

 of disillusionment. The millennium had not arrived, in very truth 

 it seemed farther off than ever, and the source of special inspiration 

 had dried up. But the elimination of these poets of the moment did 

 not affect the main development of poetry. Those poets, who had 

 been in the stream of tendency, and who were diverted by the violent 

 flood of war feelings and impressions settled back upon the normal. 

 They had not required subjects more stimulating than those ordinary 

 problems or appearances of life and nature which are always present. 

 Their technical acquirements were as adequate as ever and they took 

 up the task of expression where it had been interrupted. 



There are many mansions in the house of poetry; the art is most 

 varied and adaptable; we must acknowledge its adequacy for all 

 forms and purposes of expression, — from the lampoon, through the 

 satire, through mere description and narrative, through the epic, to 

 the higher forms of the lyric and the drama. Rhythm, being the 

 very breath and blood of all art, here lends itself dispassionately and 

 without revolt to the lowest drudgery as well as the highest inspiration. 

 But when so often calling on the name of poetry, I am thinking of 

 that element in the art which is es"sential, in which the power of 

 growth resides, which is the winged and restless spirit keeping pace 

 with knowledge and often beating into the void in advance of specula- 

 tion: the spirit which Shakespeare called "the prophetic soul of the 

 wide world dreaming on things to come". This spirit endeavours^ 



