There are very few of those who are making genuine poetry, who are content simply to sing. Indeed, it hardly seems to be a matter of choice, but an urgency, secret and compelling as a natural instinct, by means of which life is commanding expression in literary art. This is not to suggest, however, that no lyrics are being composed. Current poetry often reveals a true lyrical gift, especially in early work; and so long as poets continue to be born young, we shall not lack for songs. We may find, too, a rare singer like W. H. Davies, for whom genius, temperament and circumstance have effected a happy isolation from the complexity of modern existence. Owing allegiance chiefly to nature, he is free as the air in body and soul. Unspoilt by books, and saving his spirit humane and merry and sweet from the petty constraints of civilization, he carols as lightly as a robin or a thrush. But he is almost a solitary exception, and may serve to prove the rule that the pure lyric--some intimate emotion bubbling over into music--cannot say all that demands to be said when the poetic spirit is completely in touch with life. Now, in all the most vital of this modern verse, poetry has come so close to life as to claim its very identity. It has left the twilight of unreality and stepped into clear day. It has broken down the exclusiveness which penned it within a prescribed circle of theme and of language; and it has taken hold upon the world, real and entire. Moreover, the life upon which it seizes in this way is wider, more complex, more meaningful and varied than ever before. Political and social changes have made humanity a larger thing--whether regarded in the actual numbers which democracy thus brings within the poetic ken, or in their manifold significance. Horizons, both mental and material, have been extended. Science presses on in quiet confidence, the dogmatic phase being over; and its methods as well as its data pass readily into the collective mind. Religion, no longer synonymous with a single creed or form of worship, can find room within itself for all the spiritual activity of mankind everywhere; and in the juster proportion thus attained, nobler syntheses are shaping. A constructive social sense replaces the old negative commands with a positive duty of service. Values are changing; new ideals quicken, struggle and fructify; fresh aspects of life, and visions of human destiny, are opened up; while in every sphere the spirit of inquiry and the experimental method generate an energy of conflict which the timid and the sleepy loathe, but which is nevertheless the dynamic of progress.