This circle may soon be broken. A ferment, which in the 'nineties stirred in journalism, and a decade later transformed our drama, is working now in verse. The poetical revival now upon us may be richer so far in promise than in great poetry, but it is very significant. For one thing, it is advertising poetry, and since poetry is precisely what Shakespeare called it, caviare to the general--a special commodity for occasional use--a little advertising will be good for it. Again, the verse that has sprung from the movement is much of it thoroughly interesting. Some of it is as bizarre as the new art of the futurists and the vorticists; some is merely vulgar, some merely affected, some hopelessly obscure; but other poems, without convincing us of their greatness, seem as original and creative as were Browning and Whitman in their day. Probably, like the new painting, the movement is more significant than the movers. Nevertheless, if one is willing to put aside prejudice, suspend judgment, and look ahead, _vers libre_, even when more _libre_ than _vers_, is full of meaning--poetic realism, even when more real than poetry, charged with possibility. For with all its imperfections much of this new poetry is trying to mean more than ever before to the general reader. I am not sure that the democracy can be interpreted for him in noble poetry and remain the democracy he knows. And yet I think, and I believe, that, in his sub-consciousness at least, he feels an intense longing to find the everyday life in which we all live--so thrilling beneath the surface--interpreted, swung into that rhythmic significance that will make it part of the vast and flowing stream of all life. I can tolerate many short, rough words in poetry, and much that we have been accustomed to regard as prose, on the way to such a goal. For I honestly believe that it is better to read fantastic poetry, coarse poetry, prosaic poetry--anything but vulgar and sentimental poetry--than no poetry at all. To be susceptible to no revival of the vivid emotions of youth, to be touched by no thoughts more intense than our own, to be accessible to no imaginative interpretation of the life we lead--this seems to me to be a heavy misfortune. But to possess, as most of us do, our share of all these qualities, and then at no time, in no fitting mood or proffered opportunity, to read poetry--this can only be regarded as deafness by habit and blindness from choice. EYE, EAR, AND MIND Our eyes are more civilized than our ears, and much more civilized than our minds; that is the flat truth, and it accounts for a good deal that puzzles worthy people who wish to reform literature.