170 The Future Poetry
Out of the mirror-lined chambers of self (grand though
they be, but O how dreary!) in which you have hitherto spent
your life, —where, if the line had only ended with the parenthesis, it
would have been a strain of perfect choric poetry, magnificently
thought, imaged and cadenced, but the closing words spoil the
effect, for they are a sharp descent towards the prose level. There
are too elevations rising up from a rhythmical prose cadence but
lifted high by the scriptural nobility of phrase and spiritual turn
which we get so often in Carpenter. These fluctuations appear
then to be inherent in the form and it seems to me that being
in their nature a constant fall from the striving after a sustained
perfection, they take away altogether from the claims of this
“free verse”. In lesser writers there is a similar but much more
pronounced inadequacy; they rise little and fall or drag along
with the most easily satisfied self-content in lowness. But that
poets of great power should be satisfied with these deficiencies
of their instrument and their most cultured readers accept them
without question, indicates an inferiority, almost a depravation
in the modern ear, or at least a great remissness in the austerity
of the search after perfection. It is now sometimes said that the
lines of poetry should follow the lines of life, and life, it might
be contended, is of this kind, thought itself is of this kind, and
the rhythm of poetry gains in sincerity by following them. But
art is not of this kind, the poetic spirit is not of this kind; the
nature of art is to strive after a nobler beauty and more sustained
perfection than life can give, the nature of poetry is to soar on
the wings of the inspiration to the highest intensities and keep
winging, as far as may be, always near to them. A form which
in the name of freedom remits and relaxes this effort, whatever
its other merits and advantages, means a laxity of effort and is
a dangerous downward concession.
But there is another objection which may be denied, but
seems to me true, that this kind of verse does not give its full
spiritual value to the poet’s speech. Carpenter has a power of
substance, thought-vision, image, expression which is very rare