ggest that the energy
of future poets will not be largely exercised on themes of this intrepid
social character, but that as civilisation more and more tightly lays
hold upon literature, and excludes the purest form of it from one
province after another, poetry will, in its own defence, cultivate more
and more what Hazlitt calls "a mere effusion of natural sensibility."
Hazlitt used the phrase in derision, but we may accept it seriously, and
not shrink from adopting it. In most public remarks about current and
coming literature in the abstract, I marvel at the confidence with which
it is taken for granted that the sphere of interest occupied by writers
of the imagination is sure to grow wider and wider. It is expected to
embrace the world, to take part in a universal scheme of pacification,
to immortalise imperial events, to be as public as possible. But surely
it is more and more clearly proved that prose is the suitable medium for
such grandiose themes as these. Within the last year our minds have been
galvanised into collective sympathy by two great sensations of
catastrophe, each case wearing the most thrilling form that tragedy can
take in the revolt of nature against the feverish advances of mankind. I
suppose we may consider the destruction of the Titanic and the loss of
Captain Scott's expedition as two absolutely typical examples of what is
thought by journalists to be fitting material for poetry. Yet by common
consent, these tragic occurrences did not awaken our numerous poets to
any really remarkable effort, lyrical or elegiac. No ode or threnody
could equal in vibrating passion Captain Scott's last testament. These
are matters in which the fullness of a wholly sincere statement in prose
does not require, does not even admit, the introduction of the symbol.
The impact of the sentiments of horror and pity is too sudden and
forcible.

My own view is that, whether to its advantage or not, the poetry of the
future is likely to be very much occupied with subjects, and with those
alone, which cannot be expressed in the prose of the best-edited
newspaper. In fact, if I were to say what it is which I think coming
poets will have more and more to be on their guard against, I should
define it as a too rigid determination never to examine subjects which
are of collective interest to the race at large. I dread lest the
intense cultivation of the Ego, in minutest analysis and microscopical
observation of one's self, shoul