Page:Some soldier poets.djvu/99



the year nineteen hundred approached and was passed young men said: "We are the new century. How shall we differ from the old?" And elder folk said: "Of course the new century must be different; let us try and welcome it." Young poets, who wish to prove that they are a new sort, embrace theories and think that these lend them importance; obviously they have not produced enough work to claim the authority of masters, so they must needs borrow if they wish to impose. Unfortunately, theory descrbies art but cannot create. No work succeeds because it conforms to rules; bad and good works alike exemplify the practice of all schools.

The "Imagists" are one small twig of a branch of the new tree made by forking movements. They plead that they are not rebels, and point out how, at least in English, verse free from rhyme and conventional rhythms has always existed; besides, they admire, nay worship, the past. None the less they publish a manifesto, and prove their doctrine to be impressionistic.

"The 'exact' word does not mean the word which exactly describes the object in itself, it means the 'exact' word which brings the effect of that object before the reader as it presented itself to the poet's mind at the time of writing the poem."

The value of a poem cannot consist in informing us how a poet felt at a given moment; it may tell us this, but its value will lie in the quality of his feeling and the felicity with which it takes shape. This form is a growth like other organisms. If, as it grows, the poet says, "But I did not feel like this or think of that when the impulse started me off; I am adulterating my inspiration with afterthoughts," he checks and thwarts this growth, Rh