10 The Future Poetry
good material. Taking the impression it creates for a starting-
point and the trend of English poetry for our main text, but
casting our view farther back into the past, we may try to sound
what the future has to give us through the medium of the poetic
mind and its power for creation and interpretation. The issues of
recent activity are still doubtful and it would be rash to make any
confident prediction; but there is one possibility which this book
strongly suggests and which it is at least interesting and may be
fruitful to search and consider. That possibility is the discovery
of a closer approximation to what we might call themantrain
poetry, that rhythmic speech which, as the Veda puts it, rises at
once from the heart of the seer and from the distant home of
the Truth, — the discovery of the word, the divine movement,
the form of thought proper to the reality which, as Mr. Cousins
excellently says, “lies in the apprehension of a something stable
behind the instability of word and deed, something that is a
reflection of the fundamental passion of humanity for something
beyond itself, something that is a dim shadowing of the divine
urge which is prompting all creation to unfold itself and to rise
out of its limitations towards its Godlike possibilities.” Poetry
in the past has done that in moments of supreme elevation; in
the future there seems to be some chance of its making it a more
conscious aim and steadfast endeavour.