Recent English Poetry – 3 191This is a style and substance which recovers something that had
been lost and yet is new and pregnant of new things in English
literature.
It is sufficient at present to indicate this new power of lan-
guage. But we must see whence it arises and to what possibility
it points in the widening of the realms of poetic interpretation. It
points to a greater thing than has yet been achieved and it is itself
a higher achievement, — apart from all question of the force and
genius of individual poets. Shakespeare is still — though need he
be always? — immeasurably the largest name in English poetry;
but still, however preeminent his genius, there remain greater
things to be seen by the poet than Shakespeare saw and greater
things to be said in poetry than Shakespeare said, — and here
we have an indication of the way on which they lie and of the
gates which open to their hiding-place and own home of light
and self-revelation.