Page:The Pathfinder, Swiggett, June 1911.djvu/6

2 THE POETRY OF

FLORENCE EARLE COATES

By

Lord Roseberry remarked the other day, in referring to England's present political situation: "You know they've been 'doing away' with the Upper House ever since we've had one," and with poetry, not peers, in mind, one finds a striking parallel in one of Professor Gummere's illuminating essays, where he writes:—"Although hailed as queen of the arts and hedged about by a kind of divinity, Poetry seems to sit on an always tottering throne. In nearly every age known to human records some one has chronicled his foreboding that her days were numbered." Never was this distrust more felt than now. According to the man in the street, poetry is dead. It is the world-old story, of one who was heart-broken because he could not finally decide whether day was the absence of night, or darkness the lack of light? But "Without poetry," said Matthew Arnold, "science will appear incomplete," and the great teacher-critic continues, adding prophecy to the statement of fact, "The future of poetry is