of our own individual hope and destiny;
and that is the real work of all the thoughts that may be roughly
called poetical; that they reveal to us something permanent and strong
and beautiful, something which has an irrepressible energy, and which
outlines itself clearly upon the dark background of days, a spirit
with which we can join hands and hold deep communication, which we
instinctively feel is the greatest reality of the world. In such
moments we perceive that the times when we descend into the meaner
and duller and drearier businesses of life are interludes in our real
being, into which we have to descend, not because of the actual worth
of the baser tasks, but that we may practise the courage and the hope
we ought to bring away from the heavenly vision. The more that men
have this thirst for beauty, for serene energy, for fulness of life,
the higher they are in the scale, and the less will they quarrel with
the obscurity and humility of their lives, because they are
confidently waiting for a purer, higher, more untroubled life, to
which we are all on our way, whether we realise it or no!

V

ART

It is not uncommon for me to receive letters from young aspirants,
containing poems, and asking me for an opinion on their merits. Such a
letter generally says that the writer feels it hardly worth while to
go on writing poetry unless he or she is assured that the poems are
worth something. In such cases I reply that the answer lies there!
Unless it seems worth while, unless indeed poetry is the outcome of an
irrepressible desire to express something, it is certainly not worth
while writing. On the other hand, if the desire is there, it is just
as well worth practising as any other form of artistic expression. A
man who liked sketching in water-colours would not be restrained from
doing so by the fear that he might not become an Academician, a person
who liked picking out tunes on a piano need not desist because there
is no prospect of his earning money by playing in public!

Poetry is of all forms of literary expression the least likely to
bring a man credit or cash. Most intelligent people with a little gift
of writing have a fair prospect of getting prose articles published.
But no one wants third-rate poetry; editors fight shy of it, and
volumes of it are unsaleable.

I have myself written so much poetry, have published so many volumes
of verse, that I can speak sympathetically on the subject. I worked