n the revolt of man. I anticipate in the general tone of it an
earnestness, a fullness of tribute to the noble passion of life, an
utterance simple and direct. I believe that it will take as its theme the
magnificence of the spectacle of Man's successful fight with Nature, not
the grotesque and squalid picturesqueness of his occasional defeat.

Your chairman has admirably said, in one of his charming essays, that
'History may be abstract, science may be frankly inhuman, even art may be
purely formal; but poetry must be full of human life'. This consideration,
I think, may make us feel perfectly secure as to the ultimate maintenance
of poetic expression. For humanity will always be with us, whatever
changes may be introduced into our social system, whatever revolutions may
occur in religion, in legality, in public order, or in the stratification
of composite life. I confess the only atmosphere in which it is impossible
for me to conceive of poetry as able to breathe would be one of complete
and humdrum uniformity of existence, such as was dreamed of at one time,
but I think is no longer so rigidly insisted on, by extreme socialistic
reformers. As long as there is such variety of individual action possible
as will give free scope to the energies and passions, the hopes and fears,
of mankind, so long I think the element of plastic imagination will be
found to insist on expression in the mode of formal art. It is quite
possible that, as a result of extended knowledge and of the democratic
instinct, a certain precipitant hardness of design, such as was presented
in the nineteenth century by Tennyson in the blank verse lyrics in 'The
Princess', by Browning in the more brilliant parts of 'One Word More', by
Swinburne in his fulminating 'Sapphics', may be as little repeated as the
analogous hardness of Dryden in 'MacFlecknoe' or the lapidary splendour of
Gray in his 'Odes'. I should rather look, at least in the immediate
future, to a revival of the liquid ease of Chaucer or the soft
redundancies of 'The Faery Queen'. The remarkable experiments of the
Symbolists of twenty years ago, and their effect upon the whole body of
French verse, lead me to expect a continuous movement in that direction.

It is difficult indeed to speak of the probable future of poetry without
introducing the word Symbolism, over which there has raged so much windy
warfare in the immediate past. I cannot help believing that the immense
importance of this id