My own view is that, whether to its advantage or not, the poetry of the future is likely to be very much occupied with subjects, and with those alone, which cannot be expressed in the prose of the best-edited newspaper. In fact, if I were to say what it is which I think coming poets will have more and more to be on their guard against, I should define it as a too rigid determination never to examine subjects which are of collective interest to the race at large. I dread lest the intense cultivation of the Ego, in minutest analysis and microscopical observation of one's self, should become the sole preoccupation of the future poet. I will not tell you that I dread lest this should be one of his principal preoccupations, for that would be to give way to a cheery piece of mid-Victorian hypocrisy which would be unworthy of you and of me alike. The time is past when intelligent persons ought to warn writers of the imagination not to cultivate self-analysis, since it is the only safeguard against the follies of an unbridled romanticism. But although the ivory tower offers a most valuable retreat, and although the poets may be strongly recommended to prolong their _villeggiatura_ there, it should not be the year-long habitation of any healthy intelligence. I do not question that the closing up of the poetic field, the depending more and more completely for artistic effect upon an "effusion of natural sensibility," will isolate the poet from his fellows. He will be tempted, in the pursuit of the symbol which illustrates his emotion, to draw farther and farther away from contact with the world. He will wrap his singing-robes not over his limbs only, but over his face, and treat his readers with exemplary disdain. We must be prepared, or our successors must, to find frequently revealed the kind of poet who not merely sees nothing superior to himself, but nothing except himself. I am not concerned to say that this will be unfortunate or blameworthy; the moralist of the future must attend to that. But I can believe that this unyielding and inscrutable attitude may produce some fine artistic effects. I can believe that both intensity and dignity may be gained by this sacrifice of the plainer human responsibilities, although I am not prepared to say at what loss of other qualities. It is clear that such a writer will not allow the public to dictate to him the nature or form of his lyric message, and he will have to depend for success entirely on the positive value of his verse.