It would not have to rely on such material because it would have something to say that had nothing to do with reporting contemporary life or with vying with the progress of intelligence. And even poetry that is _modernist_ only in the historical sense--even Ezra Pound’s or Vachel Lindsay’s--accomplishes at least this: by its enlarging process it has widened the limits of reference, diction and construction in poetry; by extending the poet’s curriculum it has also extended his acceptable scope. So that poetry that is modernist only in the personal sense has some chance of attention, its frowardness being taken for historical modernism. Many common symbols of civilization, in any case, are bound to be absorbed naturally by poetry, although at the beginning they cannot but be used with self-consciousness. The naturalness with which some new invention or scientific discovery may be uttered in poetry depends on its recentness. There is even a definite time-limit before such a ‘new’ thing becomes a common object and before which it is affected to write of it in poetry except rarely and then with deliberate affectation. This time-limit varies, of course, with the nature of the oddity--with the train, for example, the period was about seventy years. During this period of human acclimatization the oddity gradually loses the capital letter and the italics with which it was perhaps originally written; its name comes to be pronounced without any sense of strangeness or second-thought. It gradually approaches a stage, in fact, when it is nearly quaint; and it is just in this stage when it is most natural. The train has passed from a stage of complete strangeness to one of complete familiarity. Wordsworth was one of the first poets to notice the train, but as a curiosity rather than as a common object and on the theory that poetry should take recognition of modern scientific development. Although his view was that poetry was conferring favour on the scientists in recognizing their products, it will be seen from the following lines that he admitted minutely and specifically the various requirements which civilization puts upon poetry: material progressiveness, literal prophecy, intellectual advancements, ‘future change’, and, finally, elegance, which he achieves by calling Steamboats, Viaducts, Railways otherwise than by their own names (‘Motions and Means’, ‘Nature’s lawful offspring’). But he mentions them in the title: STEAMBOATS, VIADUCTS, AND RAILWAYS Motions and Means, on land and sea at war With old poetic feeling, not for this Shall ye, by Poets even, be judged amiss! Nor shall your presence, howsoe’er it mar The loveliness of Nature, prove a bar To the Mind’s gaining that prophetic sense Of future change, that point of vision, whence May be discovered what in soul ye are.