ard
tendency, nor do we want so much of the easy and cheap journalistic
element, as comes so often in the so named "free verse". What is
really wanted is an individual consistency, and a brightness of
imagery which shall be the poet's own by reason of his own personal
attachment, and not simply the variance of the many-in-one poetry of
the day.

It is not enough to write passably, it is only enough when there are
several, or even one, who will give their or his own peculiar contact
with those agencies of the day, the hour, and the moment, who will
find or invent a style best suited to themselves. Attempts at
excessive individualism will never create true individualistic
expression, no affected surprise in personal perversity of image or
metaphor will make a real poet, or real poetry. There must be first
and last of all, a sure ardour, the poet's very own, which will of
itself support obvious, or even slightly detectable, influences. It is
not enough to declaim oneself, or propose continually one's group. The
single utterance is what is necessary, a real freshness of
vocalization which is, so to speak, the singer's own throat. If he be
original in his freshness, we shall be able to single him away from
the sweeping movements of the hour by his very "specialness" in touch,
that pressure of the mind and spirit upon the page, which is his.

We shall translate a poet through his indications and intentions as
well as through his arrivals, and we must condemn no one to fame
beyond his capacity or deserts. We have never the need of extravagant
laud. It is not enough to praise a poet for his personal charm, his
beauty of body and of mind and soul, for these are but beautiful
things at home in a beautiful house. In the case of Brooke, we have
ringing up among hosts of others, James's voice that he was all of
this, but I would not wish to think it was the wish of any real poet
to be "condemned to sociability", merely because he was an eminently
social being, or because he was the exceptionally handsome, among the
many less so; or be condemned to overpraise for what is after all but
an indication to poetic power. "If I should die", is of course a very
lovely sonnet, and it is the true indication of what Brooke might have
been, but it is not the reason to be doomed to find all things
wonderful in him. For in the state of perfection, if one see always
with a lancet eye, we really do accentuate the essence of beauty by a
careful an