action in October 1915, although he was but twenty years of age, he had
been promoted captain. In the universal sorrow, few figures awaken more
regret, than his. Something, too, had I space, should be said about the
minstrels who have been less concerned with the delicacies of
workmanship than with stirring the pulses of their auditors. In this
kind of lyric "A Leaping Wind from England" will long keep fresh the
name of W.N. Hodgson, who was killed in the battle of the Somme. His
verses were collected in November 1916. The strange rough drum-taps of
Mr. Henry Lawson, published in Sydney at the close of 1915, and those of
Mr. Lawrence Rentoul, testify to Australian enthusiasm. Most of the
soldier-poets were quite youthful; an exception was R.E. Vernede, whose
_War Poems_ (W. Heinemann, 1917) show the vigour of moral experience. He
was killed in the attack on Harrincourt, in April 1917, having nearly
closed his forty-second year. To pursue the list would only be to make
my omissions more invidious.

There can be no healthy criticism where the principle of selection is
neglected, and I regret that patriotism or indulgence has tempted so
many of those who have spoken of the war-poets of the day to plaster
them with indiscriminate praise. I have here mentioned a few, in whose
honour even a little excess of laudation may not be out of place. But
these are the exceptions, in a mass of standardised poetry made to
pattern, loosely versified, respectable in sentiment, uniformly
meditative, and entirely without individual character. The reviewers who
applaud all these ephemeral efforts with a like acclaim, and who say
that there are hundreds of poets now writing who equal if they do not
excel the great masters of the past, talk nonsense; they talk nonsense,
and they know it. They lavish their flatteries in order to widen the
circle of their audience. They are like the prophets of Samaria, who
declared good unto the King of Israel with one mouth; and we need a
Micaiah to clear the scene of all such flatulent Zedekiahs. It is not
true that the poets of the youngest generation are a myriad Shelleys and
Burnses and Berangers rolled into one. But it is true that they carry on
the great tradition of poetry with enthusiasm, and a few of them with
high accomplishment.

1917.

THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY[8]

"J'ai vu le cheval rose ouvrir ses ailes d'or,
Et, flairant le laurier que je tenais encor,
Verdoyant a jam