The poetry of to-day is the very spirit of that multiform life, giving shape and permanence to whatever is finest in it; and for that reason its manner of expression is almost infinitely varied, and often very different from the poetic forms of other ages. That, indeed, is one sign of its vitality: the fact that it is a living organism, capable of adaptation, growth and development. Old forms are modified and new ones created to embody the new ideas. All the resources of prosody are drawn upon--when they will serve--and used with the utmost freedom. And when, as frequently happens, they will not serve; when the established rules of English verse seem inadequate to the present task, they are challenged and thrown aside. Thus there arises, in the technique of poetry itself, a corresponding conflict to that in the world of ideas, indicating a similar vigour and equally prophetic of advance. In all this variety, however, the dramatic element is a fairly constant feature; and it seems to be growing stronger. It is present in many poems which do not look like drama at all, as for instance in the narratives of Mr Masefield. Here we may find vividly dramatic scenes, astonishingly evolved in the form of an elaborate stanza, or the rhymed couplet; just as the tragedies in _Daily Bread_ by Mr Gibson are wrought out in a quite original unrhymed verse of extreme austerity. Again, much of Mr Abercrombie's work is dramatic in essence, apart from his plays in regular form; and Mrs Woods has completed a third poetical drama, having already published two tragedies in her collected edition. But there is one fact to be noted in coming from those poets to the drama of "John Presland." With them the dramatic impulse is often subconscious, and it has to fight its way, obscurely sometimes, against a twin impulse towards lyricism. It is strong but not yet dominant; vital, but not yet aware of its own potentiality. It throbs below the surface of alien forms, but it rarely breaks away to an independent existence. And even when it achieves consciousness, as it does most completely perhaps in the work of Mrs Woods, traces of the struggle cling about it still--in a lyrical _motif_, or a fragment of song embedded in the structure of a play, or in a lyric intensity of feeling. With "John Presland," however, the general tendency is reversed. The dramatic impulse has become a definite and prevailing purpose, with the lyrical element subordinated to it; and, as a consequence, we have here a drama of full stature, a complete, organic, and acutely conscious art-form.