by it: he must enter into that matter without expecting a cipher-code to the meaning. The ideal modernist poem is its own clearest, fullest and most accurate meaning. Therefore the modernist poet does not have to talk about the use of images ‘to render particulars exactly’, since the poem does not give a rendering of a poetical picture or idea existing outside the poem, but presents the literal substance of poetry, a newly created thought-activity: the poem has the character of a creature by itself. Imagism, on the other hand, and all other similar dead movements, took for granted the principle that poetry was a translation of certain kinds of subjects into the language that would bring the reader emotionally closest to them. It was assumed that a natural separation existed between the reader and the subject, to be bridged by the manner in which it was presented. Georgianism was a dead movement contemporary with Imagism. Although not so highly organised as Imagism, it had a great vogue between the years 1912 and 1918 and was articulate chiefly upon questions of style. Its general recommendations seem to have been the discarding of archaistic diction such as ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and ‘floweret’ and ‘whene’er’ and of poetical constructions such as ‘winter drear’ and ‘host on armèd host’ and of pomposities generally. Another thing understood between the Georgians was that their verse should avoid all formally religious, philosophic or improving themes, in reaction to Victorianism; and all sad, wicked café-table themes in reaction to the ’nineties. It was to be English yet not aggressively imperialistic; pantheistic rather than atheistic; and as simple as a child’s reading book. This was all to the good, perhaps, but such counsels resulted in a poetry that could rather be praised for what it was not than for what it was. Eventually Georgianism became principally concerned with Nature and love and leisure and old age and childhood and animals and sleep and other uncontroversial subjects. Unfortunately there was no outstanding figure either among the Imagists, the Vers Librists generally, or among the Georgians, capable of writing a new poetry within these revised forms. So in both cases all that happened was that the same old stock-feelings and situations were served up again, only with a different sauce. And poetry became shabbier than ever. The extent of this shabbiness was concealed by the boom which the War brought about in poetry, as part of the general mobilization of public industries. A great many poets were carried through to popular recognition on the wave of the War who would otherwise never have been heard of again. Alan Seegar is an American example of this temporary immortalization. The place of Rupert Brooke in English tradition is likely to be more secure only because this tradition has more powerful methods of literary propaganda: Rupert Brooke writing at the present moment unconnected with the war