Page:Poetry, a magazine of verse, Volume 7 (October 1915-March 1916).djvu/117

A Nation-wide Art atures of feudal Europe—all this cannot last much longer. They will he forced out of their corners, their prejudices, by those hardy pioneers—steel rails, journalism, moving pictures, popular tales and songs, local festivals, world's fairs, clamorous cities. At last they will have to follow the people, obey the people's need of them. They will have to "go west," leaving Europe, and even New Europe, behind. And in that day our art, our literature, will cease to be provincial, will resume the continental habit which began with Whitman and Mark Twain.

Who can measure, for example, the future spiritual influence of the Grand Cañon of Arizona—the architectonic effect of its beauty of structural line and subtly harmonized color? Years ago I wrote—in the Atlantic for December, 1899:

That journey took me across the strange desert in a stagecoach, and ended in a log shack at Grand View. This year