Poetry To-day

POETRY TO-DAY BY IOLO A. WILLIAMS HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED 3 YORK STREET, ST. JAMESS LONDON, S. W. i 8 NOTE Most of the quotations, used as illustrations in this Essay, are merely short extracts. The following poems, however, are quoted in full Customs Die Hard, by Mr. J. C. Squire From The Survival of the Fittest. Allen Unwin.. The Ship, by Mr. J. C. Squire From Poems in One Volume. Heinemann. They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, by the late Ernest Dowson From Poems. John Lane. An Epitaph, by Mr. Walter de la Mare From The Listeners. Constable. Clear Eyes, by Mr. Walter de la Mare From Motley. Constable. Everyone Sang, by Mr. Siegfried Sassoon From War Poems. Heinemann. My very best thanks are due to the above mentioned authors and publishers for granting me permission to use these poems. I. A. W. POETRY TO-DAY POETRY TO-DAY IT is usually wise, when writing upon a subject, to begin by defining it, as exactly as possible, so that the reader may be made to understand what it is that the author is proposing to discuss. Poetry To-day, which is to be the subject of this brochure, presents, however, to the unhappy writer who endeavours to follow such a procedure, this difficulty that while it is quite possible to define the word To-day, it is not necessary, and that, on the other hand, it is most desirable to define Poetry, but unfortunately im possible. Many persons have tried to say what poetry is. Wordsworth I think ap proached pretty near to one aspect of the truth when he said that poetry was emotion recollected in tranquillity, a remark which at least contains a realisation of the fact that poetry is not a thing io POETRY TO-D4Y created hastily, thoughtlessly almost, by amind violently agitated by some strong emotion. The public loves to believe, and has been encouraged to do so by some poets, that a poem is the instantaneous outcome of inspiration, that the poet has but to have his soul stirred by some sight, to strike his breast with one hand, to throw the other before him into the air, and heigh presto the poem is ready to be written out and sent to the printer. Wordsworth knew better than that. He knew that an art needs more from its practitioner than inspiration, it needs labour and thought. The emotion which is the seed of the poem must lie in the poets mind for some time before it germinates, and as it grows it must be tended and trimmed so that the grown plant may be as shapely and perfect as possible. It is perhaps for this reason that so many of the best poems are melancholy, for melancholy is not an emotion roused, like anger, or indigna tion, or laughter, upon the immediate con templation of a particular event, but a quality of thought and feeling that for some reason which we need not consider here more or less constantly pervades the minds of a large number of the most sensitive and intelligent people. The scene, which arouses the poets original PQETRY TO-DAY n emotion, may be gay and lively enough but he does not immediately convert his emotion into a poem he lets it lie in his mind for perhaps years, and, when the poem finally emerges, it may show that the writers melancholy has permeated the whole thing, and converted some brilliantly shining and happy vision into a reflection, perhaps even more exquisitely beautiful, but sad and subdued transposed, as it were, into a minor key. Thus emotion recollected in tranquillity tends usually tochange its character in the process, and very often, from the nature of the human mind, the change is from gay to grave, from joy to wistfulness. How pervasive is melancholy in English poetry may be shown by the instance of Mr...