More, perhaps, than any other species of literature, poetry ought to be its own exceeding great reward. The verseman should write his verse with no other thought in his mind than that of relieving his heart of metrical pangs too acutely delicious to be borne. The verse being written, and then printed, the poet has done his work. He ought to have no further solicitude. He has adventured in a kind of writing in which less than in any other the element of ephemeral interest exists. If his stanzas are of true excellence, they will be as much admired in 1945 as in 1895, and perhaps more so. The best poetry does not grow old-fashioned. The poet should consider that he is not engaged in the timid coasting-trade of the novelist; he has put out on the vast seas, and if the risks of sinking are great, there is the chance of reaching the Golden Isles. He works, we will not say for immortality, since that is a vague and uncertain phrase, but for the future, and he ought to be content to miss the more facile successes of the immediate present. Poetry, after all, is not a democratic art. It appeals to the few, it “makes great music,” as Keats puts it, “for a little clan,” and it can by no means be sure, in the wild hurly-burly of our life, immediately to win the attention of those elect ears. But good verse, once printed, is never lost; sooner or later it is discovered, and fixed, like a jewel, into its proper drawer in the cabinet of the ages. To last forever, as a specimen, by the side of Lovelace or of Wolfe, should be better worth working for than to earn five thousand pounds as the author of a deciduous novel about the “New Woman.” At all events, the poet had better try to think so, for the financial prosperity can by no possible chance be his. Concerning Me and the Metropolis _By_ Louise Imogen Guiney CONCERNING ME AND THE METROPOLIS.