[FEBRUARY, 1920.
_Poetry and Criticism_
Nowadays we are all vexed by this question of poetry, and in ways
peculiar to ourselves. Fifty years ago the dispute was whether Browning
was a greater poet than Tennyson or Swinburne; to-day it is apparently
more fundamental, and perhaps substantially more threadbare. We are in a
curious half-conscious way incessantly debating what poetry is, impelled
by a sense that, although we have been living at a time of
extraordinarily prolific poetic production, not very much good has come
out of it. Having thus passed the stage at which the theory that poetry
is an end in itself will suffice us, we vaguely cast about in our minds
for some fuller justification of the poetic activity. A presentiment
that our poetic values are chaotic is widespread; we are uncomfortable
with it, and there is, we believe, a genuine desire that a standard
should be once more created and applied.
What shall we require of poetry? Delight, music, subtlety of thought, a
world of the heart's desire, fidelity to comprehensible experience, a
glimpse through magic casements, profound wisdom? All these things--all
different, yet not all contradictory--have been required of poetry.
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