i LITERATURE 



at the same time, truthful way, and that is Robert 

 Loveman in his immortal "Rain Song." 



The school of younger poets, with their free verse, 

 turn perpetually to nature themes, but the large, 

 free handling of them is not their gift. Neither is it 

 the gift of the poets who adliere to the old conven- 

 tional form of verse. They are pretty and refined, 

 they are often subtle and fluent, but there is not a 

 particle of "original sin" in any of them — nothing 

 that gives flavor and reality; it has all been bleached 

 out; they are a by-product of a bookish and arti- 

 ficial age; they are skilled craftsmen, but not poets; 

 they are what is left for the making of poets after 

 the first-hand grit and energy of the race has been 

 drawn off by the demands of a great practical indus- 

 trial age. These pale, thin, anaemic versifiers are the 

 left-overs. 



§ 



The secret of good writing is not in the choice of 

 words; it is in the use of words, their combinations, 

 their contrasts, their harmony or opposition, their 

 order of succession, the spirit that animates them. 

 A writer upon Nature may expatiate on her beau- 

 ties, but can he show us her beauties in simple lan- 

 guage? Can he in plain words make us feel the 

 poetry in the morning, or in the twilight? Just to 

 name objects in nature, like the dew, the rain, the 

 snow, a summer morning, a clover-field, the mid- 

 night skies, the clouds, the brook, is enough, tlirough 



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