Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/257

Rh. Yet I think that even the younger generation will agree with me that there are lacking qualities to give distinction to poetry as the most impressive literature of our time; qualities for want of which it is not now the chief force, but is compelled to yield its eminence to other forms of composition, especially to prose fiction, realistic or romantic, and to the literature of scientific research.

If you compare our recent poetry, grade for grade, with the Elizabethan or the Georgian, I "The two middle pillars upon which the house stood." think you will quickly realize that the characteristics which alone can confer the distinction of which I speak are those which we call Imagination and Passion. Poetry does not seem to me very great, very forceful, unless it is either imaginative or impassioned, or both; and in sooth, if it is the one, it is very apt to be the other.

The younger lyrists and idylists, when finding little to evoke these qualities, have done their best without them. Credit is due to our craftsmen for what has been called "a finer art in our day." It is wiser, of course, to succeed within obvious limits than to flounder ambitiously outside them. But the note of spontaneity is lost. Moreover, extreme finish, adroitness, graces, do not inevitably betoken the glow of imaginative conception, the ecstasy of high resolve.

If anything great has been achieved without exercise of the imagination, I do not know of it. I am