260 DEMOCRATIC ART 



none have yet really spoken to this people, or created a single image- 

 making work that could be called for them or absorbed the central 

 spirit and the idiosyncrasies which are theirs, and which, thus, in 

 highest ranges, so far remain entirely uncelebrated, unexpressed. 



Yet I have dreamed, merged in that hidden-tangled problem of our 

 fate, whose long unravelling stretches mysteriously through time- 

 dreamed out, portrayed, hinted already a little or a larger band a 

 band of brave and true, unprecedented yet armed and equipped at 

 every point the members separated, it may be, by different dates and 

 states, or south, or north, or east, or west Pacific or Atlantic a year, 

 a century here, and other centuries there but always one, compact in 

 soul, conscience-conserving, God inculcating, inspired achievers, not 

 only in Literature, the greatest art, but achievers in all art a new 

 undying order, dynasty, from age to age transmitted a band, a class, at 

 least as fit to cope with current years, our dangers, needs, as those who, 

 for their times, so well, in armour or in cowl, upheld and made illus- 

 trious, the feudal, priestly world. To offset chivalry, indeed, those 

 vanquished countless knights, and the old altars, abbeys, all their 

 priests, ages and strings of ages, a knightlier and more sacred cause 

 to-day demands, and shall supply, in a New World, to larger, grander 

 work, more than the counterpart and tally of them. 



VIII 



So far I have followed Whitman in bis polemic against 

 the culture of his country and this century. Many of his 

 prophetic utterances will appear inapplicable to Europe. 

 Yet Democracy, whether we like it or not, has to be faced 

 and accepted in the Old as well as the New World. Here, 

 therefore, as across the Atlantic, Democracy is bound to 

 produce an ideal of its own, or to * prove the most tremendous 

 failure of time.' Here, as there, ' long enough have the 

 people been listening to poems in which common humanity, 

 deferential, bends low, humiliated, acknowledging superiors.' 

 And yet, here, as there, the people have arrived at empire. 

 It is no longer possible to apostrophise them in the words of 

 Campanella's famous sonnet : 



The people is a beast of muddy brain 



That knows not its own strength, and therefore stands 

 Loaded with wood and stone ; the powerless hands 

 Of a mere child guide it with bit and rein : 



