SOME RECENT POETRY AND THE EMOTION- 

 ALIZING OF EVOLUTION^ • 



By Fred B. R. Hellems 



As my eyes turn backward through the arches of science and poetry 

 spanning a quarter of a century, they are led to a detaining vision of 

 reconstruction. The doctrine of evolution had seriously shaken the 

 foundations whereon so many of our contemporaries fondly believed 

 the superstructure of life and hope must rest; and not a few gloomily 

 asserted that if once this sweeping hypothesis became a familiar law, 

 the fairy castles of poetry must fall as low as the stately temples of 

 religion. I particularly remember the fears of one noble man, eminent 

 in reHgion rather than theology, in general literature rather than 

 technical scholarship. He was one of the rare living spirits that 

 called compellingly to youth and bade us ever turn our visions toward 

 the signals on the heights. At the close of a plea, remarkable, if not 

 finally convincing, for the old religion, he turned to poetry, voicing 

 most eloquently the dread I have suggested above. Never shall I 

 forget the profound impression produced upon us by his sympathetic 

 quoting of Matthew Arnold's plangent lines :^ 



The sea of faith 

 Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 

 Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. 



But now I only hear 

 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 



Retreating to the breath 

 Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 

 And naked shingles of the world. 



In my heart was that gloomy sinking such as only youth in its hour of 

 perturbed emotions can know. I felt as though I had followed the 

 night- wind "down the vast edges drear and naked shingles" until I 



' Reprinted from Poet Lore, Vol. XX, No. ii, pp. 113-21, by permission of the publisher. 

 » "Dover Beach," vss. 21-28. 



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