Chapter XVII

The Poets of the Dawn – 2

Byron and Wordsworth

A

POETRY whose task is to render truth of the Spirit by
passing behind the appearances of the sense and the in-
tellect to their spiritual reality, is in fact attempting a
work for which no characteristic power of language has been
discovered, — except the symbolic, but the old once established
symbols will no longer entirely serve, and the method itself is not
now sufficient for the need, — no traditional form of presenta-
tion native to the substance, no recognised method of treatment
or approach, or none at once sufficiently wide and subtle, per-
sonal and universal for the modern mind. In the past indeed there
have been hieratic and religious ways of approaching the truths
of spirit which have produced some remarkable forms in art and
literature. Sufi poetry, Vaishnava poetry are of this order, in more
ancient times the symbolic and mystic way of the Vedic singers,
while the unique revelatory utterance of the Upanishads stands
by itself as a form of inspired thought which penetrates either
direct or through strong unveiling images to the highest truths
of self and soul and the largest seeing of the Eternal. One or two
modern poets have attempted to use in a new way the almost
unworked wealth of poetical suggestion in Catholic Christianity.
But the drift of the modern mind in this direction is too large in
its aim and varied in its approach to be satisfied by any definite
or any fixed symbolic or hieratic method, it cannot rest within
the special experience and figures of a given religion. There has
been too universal a departure from all specialised forms and
too general a breaking down of the old cut channels; in place of
their intensive narrowness we have a straining through all that
has been experienced by an age of wide intellectual curiosity
to the ultimate sense of that experience. The truth behind man