Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/305

Rh and literature, are not "good form." What we do accept is society drama, chiefly that which turns upon the Parisian notion of life as it is. But whether the current drama, poetic or otherwise, reflects life as it is, is a question upon which I do not enter. I have referred to the lack of passion in modern poetry. The minor emotions are charmingly, if lightly, expressed. Humor, for instance, is given a play almost Catullian; and that Mirth is a feeling, if not a passion, is the lyrical justification of some of our felicitous modern song. Many of our poets realize that we have rounded a beautiful but too prolonged idyllic period; they amuse themselves with idly touching the strings, while awaiting some new dispensation—the stimulus of a motive, the example of a leader. Emotion cannot be always sustained; there must be intervals of rest. But each generation desires to be moved, to be thrilled; and they are mistaken who conceive the poetic imagination to be out of date and minstrelsy a foible of the past.

As it is, we hear much talk, on the part of those observers whose business it is to record An idle outcry. the movement of a single day, about the decline of ideality. Whenever one of the elder luminaries goes out, the cry is raised, Who will there be to take his place? What lights will be left when the constellation of which he was a star shall have vanished? The same cry has gone up from every generation in all eras. Those who utter it are like