Chapter XXI

Recent English Poetry – 2

T

HE EFFECTIVE stream of poetry in the English tongue
has followed no such strong distinctive turn as would be
able to sweep the effort of rhythmic expression along with
it in one mastering direction. The poets of this age pursue much
more even than their predecessors the bent of their personality,
not guided by any uniting thought or standard of form, and
have no other connecting link than the subtle similarities which
the spirit of the age always gives to its work of creation. But
the present age is so loose, fluid and many-motived that this
subtler community is not easily tangible and works out in much
less of an open family resemblance than in the Victorian poets
or their predecessors. Only in the Celtic revival in Ireland have
there been a number of considerable writers united by a common
artistic motive and ideal, and it may be for that reason that a
certain persistent thing which is striving to be and to get expres-
sion in the poetry of the time finds itself in a first illumination,
emerges as a conscious power and seeks for its adequate form
and rhythm. But we find it elsewhere too in obscurer forms; on
this element we may pause to lay stress while we leave aside as
of less importance the crowding variety of other temperamental
and personal emphasis which hides it from view or chokes up
its channels of emergence. This subtler element, although far
from being yet victorious over the tradition of the past or the
more clamorous powers of the present, is the most original,
the most unworked and fruitful in promise for the future and
represents the highest possibility of a greater coming poetry.
A distinct spiritual turn, the straining towards a deeper, more
potent, supra-intellectual and supravital vision of things is its
innermost secret of creative power. Now increasingly the highest
turn of the human mind indicates a large opening of its vision
to the self as well as the person of man and the spirit of Nature,