aster of
various arts, and the reader of poetry, engaged in cultivating the
joyful heart. But there is one artist who has not yet been permitted
to join in this agreeable pastime. He is the American poet. And as his
inclusion would be an even more joyful thing for his land than for
himself, this book may not ignore him.

The American poet has not yet begun to keep pace with the
poetry-lovers' renaissance. He is no very arresting figure; and
therefore you, reader, are already considering a skip to chapter nine.
Well, if you are no more interested in him or his possibilities than
is the average American consumer of British poetry--I counsel you by
all means to skip in peace. But if you are one of the few who discern
the promise of a vast power latent in the American poet, and would
gladly help in releasing this power for the good of the race, I can
show you what is the matter with him and what to do about it.

Why has the present renaissance of the poetry-lover not brought with
it a renaissance of the American poet? Almost every reason but the
true one has been given. The true reason is that our poets are tired.
They became exhausted a couple of generations ago; and we have kept
them in this condition ever since. In the previous chapter we saw how
city life began abruptly to be speeded up in the seventies. At that
time the poet--like almost every one else in the city--was unable to
readjust his body at once to the new pace. He was like a six-day
bicycle racer who should be lapped in a sudden and continued sprint.
That sprint is still going on. Never again has the American poet felt
the abounding energy with which he began. And never has he overtaken
the leaders.

The reason why the poet is tired is that he lives in the over-paced
city. The reason why he lives in the city is that he is chained to it
by the nature of his hack-work. And the reason for the hack-work is
that the poet is the only one of all the artists whose art almost
never offers him a living. He alone is forced to earn in other ways
the luxury of performing his appointed task in the world. For, as
Goethe once observed, "people are so used to regarding poetic talent
as a free gift of the gods that they think the poet should be as
free-handed with the public as the gods have been with him."

The poet is tired. Great art, however, is not the product of
exhaustion, but of exuberance. It will have none of the skimmed milk
of mere existence. Nothing less than