development in American poetry at the present time, I believe, is to be found, not in these centrifugal and eccentric movements, but in the considerable amount of genuine if less spectacular work which is being done upon the lines of a firmly rooted literary tradition.[55] II In the last few paragraphs, though concerned primarily with the aspect of communicability, I have been skirting the topic which lies at the centre of all movements of thought and feeling in our day, and with which I shall be concerned through the rest of this essay. I refer to the prevalent spirit of disillusionment, a state of mind which in America has made itself felt, acutely and widely, only within the last three or four years. Certainly the mood of the younger generation of poets (the men and women now in their twenties or early thirties) is very different from the poetic temper of fifteen years ago--those exciting, strained, exalted, painful years that witnessed, among other things, the rise of the “new poetry” in England and America and, somewhat later, the beginning of the war. Any comprehensive view of the stream of poetry warns us not to make too much of these twists and turns between one decade and the next; yet there is some reason to think that we have now reached or are approaching one of the major bends in the course. The “poetic renascence” of 1912-1917 was, it is true, in reaction against certain nineteenth-century attitudes,--against its Puritan code in morals and its tradition of gentility in belles-lettres; as some one has said, it delighted in hurling bricks at the silk hat of Hamilton W. Mabie; but to the most characteristic force of nineteenth-century thought and life--namely, an expansive philosophy of naturalism, embraced with enthusiasm and glorified by a romantic imagination--it merely gave a fresh impetus. The serene and humble mould Does in herself all selves enfold-- Kingdoms, destinies, and creeds, Great dreams, and dauntless deeds, Science that metes the firmament, The high, inflexible intent Of one for many sacrificed-- Plato’s brain, the heart of Christ; * * * * * Out of the earth the poem grows Like the lily, or the rose; And all man is, or yet may be, Is but herself in agony Toiling up the steep ascent Toward the complete accomplishment When all dust shall be, the whole Universe, one conscious soul.[56] These lines by John Hall Wheelock epitomise the thought that had been the main inspiration of the nineteenth century. Despite their regular metrical form, with its reminiscence of Emerson, we recognise in them the ecstatic evolutionary naturalism of Walt Whitman.