Conclusion 305that have been the leaders of the past and the old literatures that
have been hitherto the chosen vehicles of strong poetic creation
may prove incapable of holding the greater breath of the new
spirit and be condemned to fall into decadence. It may be that
we shall have to look for the future creation to new poetical
literatures that are not yet born or are yet in their youth and
first making or, though they have done something in the past,
have still to reach their greatest voice and compass. A language
passes through its cycle and grows aged and decays by many
maladies: it stagnates perhaps by the attachment of its life to a
past tradition and mould of excellence from which it cannot get
away without danger to its principle of existence or a straining
and breaking of its possibilities and a highly coloured decadence;
or, exhausted in its creative vigour, it passes into that attractive
but dangerous phase of art for art’s sake which makes of poetry
no longer a high and fine outpouring of the soul and the life but a
hedonistic indulgence and dilettantism of the intelligence. These
and other signs of age are not absent from the greater European
literary tongues, and at such a stage it becomes a difficult and a
critical experiment to attempt at once a transformation of spirit
and of the inner cast of poetic language. There is yet in the
present ferment and travail a compelling force of new poten-
tiality, a saving element in the power that is at the root of the
call to change, the power of the spirit ever strong to transmute
life and mind and make all young again, and once this magical
force can be accepted in its completeness and provided there is
no long-continued floundering among perverted inspirations or
half motives, the old literatures may enter rejuvenated into a
new creative cycle.
The poetry of the English language in direct relation to
which I have made these suggestions, has certain disadvantages
for the task that has to be attempted but also certain signal
advantages. It is a literature that has long done great things but
has neither exhausted its great natural vigour nor fixed itself in
any dominant tradition, but rather has constantly shown a free
spirit of poetical adventure and a perfect readiness to depart
from old moorings and set its sail to undiscovered countries. It