The Course of English Poetry – 1 65because there had not been the right intellectual preparation or
a sufficient basis of spiritual knowledge and experience; only so
much could be given as the solitary individual intuition of the
poet could attain by a difficult groping or a sudden sovereign
effort. But partly also it failed because after the lapse into an age
of reason the spontaneous or the intense language of spiritual
poetry could not easily be found or, if found at times, could
not be securely kept. So we get a deviation into a second age
of intellectualism, an aesthetic or reflective poetry with a much
wider range, but much less profound in its roots, much less
high in its growth, the creation of a more informed, but less
inspired intelligence. And partly out of this increasing wideness
of the observing intelligence, partly by a dissatisfaction and re-
coil from these limitations has come the trend of a recent and
contemporary poetry which seems at last to be approaching on
some of its lines and in spite of many mistakes and divagations
the secret of the utterance of profounder truth and the right
magic of a speech and rhythm which will be the apt body and
motion of its spirit.
The first definite starting-point of this long movement is the
poetry of Chaucer. Then first the rough poverty of the Anglo-
Saxon mind succeeded in assimilating the French influence and
refined and clarified by it its own rude speech and crude aesthetic
sense. It is characteristic of the difficulty of the movement that
as in its beginning, so at each important turn, or at least on
the three first occasions of a new orientation, it has had thus to
go to school, to make almost a fresh start under the influences
of a foreign culture and foreign poetic forms and motives. It
has needed each time in spite of so much poetic originality and
energy and genius a strong light of suggestion from outside to
set it upon its way. All modern literatures have had indeed at
one time or another to open out to this kind of external help
and stimulus; but, once formed and in possession of themselves,
they adopt these impresses more or less lightly and only as a
secondary assistance. But here we have a remodelling of the
whole plan under foreign teaching. Chaucer gives English poetry
a first shape by the help of French romance models and the work