{"id":1709,"date":"2013-07-13T01:36:40","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T08:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1709"},"modified":"2013-11-28T15:17:07","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T23:17:07","slug":"20-recent-english-poetry-1-vol-26-the-future-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/26-the-future-poetry\/20-recent-english-poetry-1-vol-26-the-future-poetry","title":{"rendered":"-20_Recent English Poetry – 1.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tChapter XX<\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t Recent English Poetry \u00ad 1<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE MOVEMENT<\/b> away from the Victorian type in recent and contemporary English poetry cannot be said to have yet determined its final orientation. But we may
\ndistinguish in its uncertain fluctuations, its attempts in this or that direction certain notes, certain strong tones, certain original
\nindications which may help us to disengage the final whither of its seekings. In the mass it appears as a broadening of the English
\npoetic mind into a full oneness with the great stream of modern thought and tendency, an opening up out of the narrower
\nVictorian insularity to admit a greater strength, subtlety and many-sidedness of the intelligence. For this very reason it is still
\nin the nature of a very uncertain feeling out in several directions which has not found itself and decided what shall be the centre
\nand guide of its inspiration. There are experiments of all kinds in language and rhythm and subject and treatment, many notable
\nnames each with his special turn and personality, but no supreme decisive speech and no gathering up of the many threads into
\na great representative work. The whole of European literature at the present time is of this character; it is a fluid mass with
\na hundred conflicting tendencies, a multitude of experiments, many minor formations, which has not yet run into any clear
\nuniversal mould. All that can be done is to distinguish some common characteristics of an indicative value which emerge in
\nthe more significant work and have touched more or less the performance of the lesser writers. Here we can get at least at a
\ncertain persistent element, certain potential issues. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe thing that strikes at once in a general view is that it is a
\nperiod of transition, not yet a new age, but the preparation for a new age of humanity. Everywhere there is a seeking after some
\nnew thing, a discontent with the moulds, ideas and powers of the past, a spirit of innovation, a desire to get at deeper powers<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>160<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof language, rhythm, form, because a subtler and vaster life is in birth, there are deeper and more significant things to be said
\nthan have yet been spoken, and poetry, the highest essence of speech, must find a fitting voice for them. The claim of tradition
\nis still strong, but even those who keep most in the old ways, are impelled to fill in their lines with more searching things of a more
\ncompelling substance, to strike from their instrument sounds, variations, meanings for which it had not before the capacity.
\nThe attempt has not yet been supremely successful in its whole purpose, in spite of some poetic achievement of considerable
\nbeauty, originality and compass, but it has liberated at least with some initial force novel powers and opened fresh paths; a
\nfew bright streams of initiation meet the eye running to form some mighty Brahmaputra or Ganges which is not yet in sight,
\nthough we get here and there a blue Yamuna or white Saraswati or some large impetuous torrent making its way through open
\nplain or magic woodland towards the great unseen confluence. There are many widely separate attempts, some fine or powerful
\nbeginnings, as yet no large consummation. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe straining for a new power of rhythm is the first indication of the coming change. Not quite so marked, not by any means so successful as the change in the type and power
\nof poetical expression, it is still indicative; rhythm is the subtle soul of poetry and a change in the spirit of the rhythm must
\ncome if this change in the spirit of the poetry is fully to discover itself and altogether realise its own characteristic greatness and
\nperfection. Mankind is moving to another spirit in its thought and life founded on another and deeper and larger truth of its
\ninner being than it has yet in the mass been able to see, hold and put into form of living. This change must find its echo
\nand interpretation or even some of its power of revelation and initiation in poetry, and poetry to express this greater spirit must
\nfind out a deeper, larger, more flexible, or, if one may say so, more multitudinously expressive rhythm than the great poets of the
\npast were under the necessity of using; something of the same change has to be achieved as has been successfully accomplished
\nin music. We see accordingly some attempt to break or enlarge,    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>161<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ndeepen or subtilise the traditional moulds, to substitute others of a more delicate character or with a more varied and flexible principle, to search out new packed or dissolved movements. There have been some considerable successes, but nothing of such a
\ncomplete, sweeping and satisfying force as would quite content a certain eagerness and impatient urge of the arriving age to find
\na full rhythmic basis for its own way of self-expression. And so we find too the attempt to initiate a violent and unprecedented
\nrevolution in the whole fundamental method of poetic rhythm. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis tendency in some writers goes no farther than an irregular use of metre which does not really carry us any farther towards the desired result and is in no way an improvement on
\nthe past since it has no true artistic principle to guide us to freer and more consummate harmonies. But pushed to its logical issue
\nit has created the still growing form of free verse of which we now find examples in most of the great literary languages and
\ncoupled with it a theory that this is the one future chance for poetry. Metre and rhyme are said to be played out, things of
\nthe past, which can no longer be allowed to chain and hamper the great and free movement which the enlarging spirit of poetry
\ndemands; as rhyme was in Milton’s later view only a dainty trifle which he flung aside for the organ harmonies of his blank verse,
\nso metre itself is a petty thing, half ornament, half fetter, which has to be flung aside for some nobly self-governed democratic
\nanarchy that is to develop from this new type. That is a theory of very doubtful validity. In the hands of most of its exponents
\nit seems to be in practice nothing but a licence for writing prose in variously cut lengths, prose breaking off at the end of a clause
\nor in the middle of it to go on refreshed in the line below, \u2014 I have seen even a line of free verse consisting of a majestic
\nsolitary pronoun, \u2014 and that is more an eccentric method of printing than a new rhythm. But without accepting the theory
\nin its intolerant entirety one can appreciate the motive which moved the greater masters and more skilful craftsmen of this
\nform, if form it can be called, to make the innovation. There is something large and many-sided and constantly mutable in
\nthe life, thought and spirit of today which needs, to express it<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>162<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsympathetically, vast and flowing movements or on the contrary brief, sudden and abrupt paces or the alternation of these and
\nintermediate and variant lengths and turns: there is something at the same time densely full and singularly and minutely subtle
\nin the modern thinking mind which is with difficulty accommodable by the restricted range of subtleties, variations and
\nfullnesses of any given poetic measure. Why not then break away from all the old hampering restrictions and find a new principle
\nof harmony in accordance with the freedom, the breadth and largeness of view, the fineness of feeling and sensation of the
\nmodern spirit, some form which shall have the liberty of prose and yet command the intensified heights and fluctuations and
\nfalls of the cadence of poetry? There is no reason why not, if the thing can be done,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 the proof of these things lies in the
\nexecution; but it may be doubted whether the method used is the right method. At any rate it has not been fully justified
\neven in the hands of its greatest or most skilful exponents. It is used, as in Whitman, to give the roll of the sea of life or the
\nbroad and varying movements of the spirit of humanity in its vigorous experience and aspiration, or, as in Carpenter, to arrive
\nat the free and harmonious accession of the human intelligence to profound, large and powerful truths of the spirit, or, as in
\ncertain French writers, to mould into accurate rhythm the very substance and soul and characteristic movement of soul-states,
\nideas or objects described and seen. These are things that need to be done, but it remains to be seen whether they cannot be done
\nin the recognised and characteristic movement of poetry, rather than in a compromise with prose cadences. The genius of poetic
\nmeasure walking in the path opened by the ancient discovery of cadenced beat and concentrated rhythm has not yet exhausted
\nitself, nor is there any proof that it cannot accommodate its power to new needs or any sign that it can only survive in an
\narrested senility or fall into a refined decadence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe most considerable representatives of this new and free
\nform of poetic rhythm are English and American, Carpenter and Whitman. Tagore’s translations of his lyrics have come in
\nas a powerful adventitious aid, but are not really to the point    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 16<\/font>3<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tin the question at issue; for these translations are nothing but a
\n\t\t\trhythmically poetic prose and that kind of writing, cadenced prose
\n\t\t\tpoetry, a well recognised form, cannot and does not try to compete
\n\t\t\twith the established principle of measure; it is an indulgence, a
\n\t\t\tminor variation which has yet its definite place and serves certain
\n\t\t\tpurposes which could not otherwise be fulfilled with any adequacy.
\n\t\t\tIt is perhaps the only method for the work Tagore intended, a poetic
\n\t\t\ttranslation of poetry reproductive of the exact thought and
\n\t\t\tspiritual intention of the original; for a version in the fixed
\n\t\t\tmeasures of another language not only substitutes another mould for
\n\t\t\tthe original movement, but by the substitution gives it almost
\n\t\t\tanother soul, so powerful, distinct and creative a thing is poetic
\n\t\t\trhythm; but the more flexible, less insistent cadence of poetic
\n\t\t\tprose does not so seize on and recast the spirit of the original
\n\t\t\tmovement; it may even give a far-off minimised shadow, echo,
\n\t\t\tillusion of it, if the same or a similar spirit is at work: it can
\n\t\t\tnever have the same power, but it may have some echo of a similar
\n\t\t\tsuggestion. When for instance Tagore writes in English, \u2014 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThou settest a barrier in thine own being and thou callest thy <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tsevered self in myriad notes. This thy self-separation has taken <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tbody in me. The great pageant of thee and me has overspread <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tthe sky. With the tune of thee and me all the air is vibrant, and <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tall ages pass with the hiding and seeking of thee and me.
\n\t\t\t\u2014 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\twe have a very beautiful delicately cadenced poetic prose and nothing more. Tagore is what some of the French writers of
\nvers<\/i>
\nlibre <\/i>are and Whitman and Carpenter are not, a delicate and subtle craftsman, and he has done his work with a perfect grace
\nand spiritual fineness; but there is no attempt to do anything more than the just work in hand, no intention of displacing the
\nold way of poetry in which he has done in his own language such wonderful things, by a new principle of poetic movement.
\nIf there were any such intention, it would have to be pronounced a failure. One has only to compare this English prose, beautiful
\nas it is, with the original poetry to see how much has gone out with the change; something is successfully substituted which<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>164<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nmay satisfy the English reader, but can never satisfy the ear or the mind that has once listened to the singer’s own native
\nand magical melodies. And this is so even though the intellectual substance, the intellectual precision and distinctness of the
\nthought are often more effective, carry home more quickly in the translation, because in the original the intellectual element,
\nthe thought limits are being constantly overborne and are sometimes almost swallowed up by the waves of suggestion that come
\nstealing in with the music: so much more is heard than is said that the soul listening goes floating into that infinity and counts
\nthe definite contribution of the intelligence as of a lesser value. Precisely there lies the greatest power of poetic rhythm for the
\nvery highest work that the new age has to do, and that it can be done by a new use of the poetic method without breaking the
\nwhole form of poetry, Tagore’s own lyrical work1<\/font><\/sup> in his mother tongue is the best evidence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhitman’s aim is consciently, clearly, professedly to make a great revolution in the whole method of poetry, and if anybody
\ncould have succeeded, it ought to have been this giant of poetic thought with his energy of diction, this spiritual crowned athlete
\nand vital prophet of democracy, liberty and the soul of man and Nature and all humanity. He is a great poet, one of the greatest
\nin the power of his substance, the energy of his vision, the force of his style, the largeness at once of his personality and his
\nuniversality. His is the most Homeric voice since Homer, in spite of the modern’s ruder less elevated aesthesis of speech and the
\ndifference between that limited Olympian and this broad-souled Titan, in this that he has the nearness to something elemental
\nwhich makes everything he says, even the most common and prosaic, sound out with a ring of greatness, gives a force even
\nto his barest or heaviest phrases, throws even upon the coarsest, dullest, most physical things something of the divinity; and he
\nhas the elemental Homeric power of sufficient straightforward <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1<\/font><\/sup> This cannot quite be said or not in the same degree about other work of Tagore’s
\nwhere this great lyrist is not so much himself in his movement, though he is always a master of rhythm.
\n  <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>165<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nspeech, the rush too of oceanic sound though it is here the surging of the Atlantic between continents, not the magic roll and
\nwash of the Aegean around the isles of Greece. What he has not, is the unfailing poetic beauty and nobility which saves greatness
\nfrom its defects \u2014 that supreme gift of Homer and Valmiki \u2014 and the self-restraint and obedience to a divine law which makes
\neven the gods more divine. Whitman will remain great after all the objections that can be made against his method or his
\nuse of it, but the question is whether what served his unique personality, can be made a rule for lesser or different spirits, and
\nwhether the defects which we see but do not and cannot weigh too closely in him, will not be fatal when not saved by his alluplifting largeness. A giant can pile up Pelion and Ossa and make of it an unhewn chaotic stair to Olympus, but others would be
\nbetter and more safely employed in cutting steps of marble or raising by music a ladder of sapphires and rubies to their higher
\nor their middle heavens. Personality, force, temperament can do unusual miracles, but the miracle cannot always be turned into
\na method or a standard. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhitman’s verse, if it can be so called, is not simply a cadenced prose, though quite a multitude of his lines only just rise above the prose rhythm. The difference is that there is a constant
\nwill to intensify the fall of the movement so that instead of the unobtrusive ictus of prose, we have a fall of the tread, almost a
\nbeat, and sometimes a real beat, a meeting and parting, sometimes a deliberate clash or even crowding together of stresses
\nwhich recall the spirit of the poetical movement, though they obey no recognised structural law of repetitions and variations.
\nIn this kind of rhythm we find actually three different levels \u2014 the distinction may be a little rough, but it will serve,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 a
\ngradation which is very instructive. First we have a movement which just manages to be other than prose movement, but yet
\nis full of the memory of a certain kind of prose rhythm. Here the first defect is that the ear is sometimes irritated, sometimes
\ndisappointed and baulked by a divided demand, memory or expectation, hears always the prose suggestion behind pursuing
\nand dragging down the feet of the poetic enthusiasm. It is as if<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>166<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\none were watching the “aerial walk” of a Hathayogin who had just conquered the force of gravitation, but only to the extent of
\na few inches, so that one is always expecting the moment which will bring him down with a bump to mother earth. It is something like a skimming just above the ground of prose, sometimes a dragging of the feet with a frequent touch and upkicking of
\nthe dust, for inevitably the poetic diction and imaginative power of style fall to the same level. Much of Whitman’s work is in this
\nmanner; he carries it off by the largeness and sea-like roll of the total impression, but others have not the same success,
\n\t\t\t\u2014
\neven the French craftsmen are weighed down, \u2014 and in them the whole has a draggled and painful effect of an amphibious
\nwaddling incertitude. But there is a nobler level at which he often keeps which does not get out of sight of the prose plain
\nor lift up above all its gravitation, but still has a certain poetic power, greatness and nobility of movement. But it is still below
\nwhat an equal force would have given in the master measures of poetry. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut the possibilities of an instrument have to be judged by its greatest effects, and there are poems, lines, passages in
\nwhich Whitman strikes out a harmony which has no kinship to nor any memory of the prose gravitation, but is as far above
\nit as anything done in the great metrical cadences. And here, and not only in Whitman, but in all writers in this form who
\nrise to that height, we find that consciously or unconsciously they arrive at the same secret principle, and that is the essential
\nprinciple of Greek choric and dithyrambic poetry turned to the law of a language which has not the strong resource of quantity.
\nArnold deliberately attempted such an adaptation but, in spite of beautiful passages, with scant success; still when he writes
\nsuch a line as <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe too vast orb of her fate, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tit is this choric movement that he reproduces. Whitman’s first poem in Sea-Drift
\n<\/i>and a number of others are written partly or
\nthroughout in this manner. When he gives us the dactylic and spondaic harmony of his lines,
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>167<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tOut of the cradle endlessly rocking, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOut of the ninth-month midnight, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tone of them wanting only one foot to be a very perfect hexameter
\nor the subtly varied movement of this other passage, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOver the hoarse surging of the sea, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOr flitting from brier to brier by day,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t The solitary guest from Alabama,<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tone has almost the rhythmical illusion of listening to a Sophoclean or Aeschylean chorus. In the opening stanzas of the noble Prayer of Columbus<\/i>, there is a continuous iambic metrical stress,
\nbut with the choric movement. One finds the same thing sometimes in French
\nvers libre<\/i>, \u2014 one poem at least of the kind I have
\nseen of wonderful beauty, \u2014 though the success is not so easy in that language. Tagore has recently attempted a kind of free verse
\nin Bengali, not so good as his regular metres, though melodious enough, as everything must be that is written by this master
\nmusician of the word, and throughout there is the same choric or dithyrambic principle of movement. This then seems to be the
\nnatural high-water mark of free poetical rhythm; it is a use of the poetic principle of measure in its essence without the limitations
\nof a set form. Evidently much can be done in this rhythmical method. But it is yet doubtful whether in languages which lack
\nthe support of quantitative measure, poetical expression in this form can carry home with at all the same force as in the received
\nways of word-music. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe may get some idea of the limitations of the form by one
\nor two examples from the poetry of Carpenter I find quoted by Mr. Cousins in his essay. Carpenter with a poetic faculty of a high
\norder, a prophet of democracy and of the Self, like Whitman, but of a higher more spiritual truth of the Self, has like him found it
\nimpossible to restrain the largeness of his vision and personality in the bonds of metrical poetry. In both we see that the prophet
\nand thinker predominate over the poet and artist. Less rough and<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>168<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tgreat than the epic voice from the other side of the ocean, his
\npoetry has a more harmonious, limpid and meditative fullness. But the lesser abundance of force and drive makes us feel more
\nthe limitations of his form. The thought is not only great, but poetically great and satisfying, the expression as form of thought
\nis noble and admirable, but we miss the subtler rhythmic uplift of the poetic enthusiasm which is given to minds of much less
\npower by the inspiring cadence and the ordered measures of the poetic spirit,
\nchandas<\/i>. His flow is ordinarily of the middle kind with occasional choric
\n\t\t\tturns and movements, but the latter do not carry with them the full
\n\t\t\tforce of the intenser poetic cadence. To cite one passage, \u2014<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere in the region of equality in the world of Freedom
\nno longer limited, standing on a lofty peak in heaven above the clouds, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFrom below hidden. Yet to all who pass into that region most clearly visible <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe the Eternal appeared.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhitman would have broken that up into five lines and got by
\nit a more distinct and forcible effect, \u2014 for the breath of poetry best rises and falls in brief and intense lengths; so printed, it
\nwould be at once apparent that we have a varied choric movement, a little stumbling into half-prose just before the end, but
\notherwise admirable, with two sudden turns of great poetic force, where the movement is precisely that of the Greek chorus.
\nBut the total effect is the sense of what one might almost call a noble and chanting superprose rhythm. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis appears more clearly in another passage where Carpenter’s movement is more at its normal level. He begins with
\na strain which is only just distinguishable from the prose strain, but suddenly rises from it to the beginning of a choric elevation, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs one shuts a door after a long confinement in the house <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\u2014 so out of your own plans and purposes escaping, \u2014 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tthen comes the full choric rise,  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>169<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tOut of the mirror-lined chambers of self (grand though they be, but O how dreary!) in which you have hitherto spent
\nyour life, \u2014 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\twhere, if the line had only ended with the parenthesis, it
\nwould have been a strain of perfect choric poetry, magnificently thought, imaged and cadenced, but the closing words spoil the
\neffect, for they are a sharp descent towards the prose level. There are too elevations rising up from a rhythmical prose cadence but
\nlifted high by the scriptural nobility of phrase and spiritual turn which we get so often in Carpenter. These fluctuations appear
\nthen to be inherent in the form and it seems to me that being in their nature a constant fall from the striving after a sustained
\nperfection, they take away altogether from the claims of this “free verse”. In lesser writers there is a similar but much more
\npronounced inadequacy; they rise little and fall or drag along with the most easily satisfied self-content in lowness. But that
\npoets of great power should be satisfied with these deficiencies of their instrument and their most cultured readers accept them
\nwithout question, indicates an inferiority, almost a depravation in the modern ear, or at least a great remissness in the austerity
\nof the search after perfection. It is now sometimes said that the lines of poetry should follow the lines of life, and life, it might
\nbe contended, is of this kind, thought itself is of this kind, and the rhythm of poetry gains in sincerity by following them. But
\nart is not of this kind, the poetic spirit is not of this kind; the nature of art is to strive after a nobler beauty and more sustained
\nperfection than life can give, the nature of poetry is to soar on the wings of the inspiration to the highest intensities and keep
\nwinging, as far as may be, always near to them. A form which in the name of freedom remits and relaxes this effort, whatever
\nits other merits and advantages, means a laxity of effort and is a dangerous downward concession. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut there is another objection which may be denied, but seems to me true, that this kind of verse does not give its full
\nspiritual value to the poet’s speech. Carpenter has a power of substance, thought-vision, image, expression which is very rare<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>170<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand in all these respects he would have been recognised as not only equal but superior to many who have enjoyed in their
\nown day the reputation of poets of the first rank. That he is not so recognised is due to the inferior form, a form legitimate
\nenough for lesser uses, but not easily capable of the greatest poetic effects. Whitman too for all his energy loses in this way;
\neven his greatest things do not go absolutely and immediately home, or having entered they do not so easily seize on the soul,
\ntake possession and rest in a calm, yet vibrating mastery. The real poetic cadence has that power, and to make the full use of
\nit is the sign of the greatest masters; it has in it then something magical, immediate and miraculous, an unanalysable triumph
\nof the spirit. But this other movement has not that stamp, it does only a little more than a highly concentrated prose might
\ndo, and this is because of the three indispensable intensities of poetry it may have intensity of thought and soul-substance,
\nintensity of expression, but the intensity of rhythm, which is poetry’s primal need, is lowered and diluted,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 even, one feels,
\nto a certain extent in its choric movements: by that lowering the two other intensities suffer, the poet himself tends to loosen
\nthem to the level of his movement. If that is so, those who use the form to meet the demands of the new age, are on the wrong
\ntrack. But a demand is there and it indicates a real need. It is evident that Whitman and Carpenter could not have expressed
\nthemselves altogether in the existing forms, even if they had made the attempt. But if the new age is to express itself with the
\nhighest poetical power, it must be by new discoveries within the principle of the intenser poetical rhythm. The recent or
\nliving masters may not have done this, though we may claim that some beginnings have been made, but the new age is only
\nat its commencement; the decisive departures, the unforeseen creations may yet be due which will equip it with an instrument
\nor many instruments suited to the largeness, depth and subtlety of the coming spirit.
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>171<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XX    Recent English Poetry \u00ad 1   THE MOVEMENT away from the Victorian type in recent and contemporary English poetry cannot be said…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-26-the-future-poetry","wpcat-38-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9607,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709\/revisions\/9607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}