40 The Future Poetry
in our own days a poet of secondary power in his moments of
inspiration can get to a vision far more satisfying to the deepest
soul within us than Shakespeare’s or Dante’s. Greatest of all
is the promise of the age that is coming, if the race fulfils its
highest and largest opening possibilities and does not founder in
a vitalistic bog or remain tied in the materialistic paddock; for it
will be an age in which all the worlds are beginning to withdraw
their screens from man’s gaze and invite his experience, and he
will be near to the revelation of the Spirit of which they are, as
we choose, the obscuring veils, the significant forms and symbols
or else the transparent raiment. It is as yet uncertain to which of
these consummations destiny is leading us.