There follows hard upon that what is in effect a confession of faith. It is not explicitly so, of course. Subjective this poet may be--is it not a virtue in the lyricist?--but he does not confide his religion to us in so many words. He has an artistic conscience. But the avowal, though it is by way of allegory and grows up out of the imagery of the poem as naturally as a blossom from its stem, is clear enough. And is supported elsewhere, implicitly, or by a mental attitude, or outlined now and then in figurative brilliance. There can be no reason to doubt its strength and its sincerity--and there is every reason to rejoice in it--for it reveals Mr Stephens as a poet of the future. One pauses there, realizing that the term may mean very much--or nothing at all. It may even suggest a certain technical vogue which, however admirable in the theory of its originators, apparently is not yet justified in the creation of manifest beauty. Our poet has no association with that, of course, except in that he shares the general impulse of the poetic spirit of his generation. That is, quite clearly, to escape from the tyranny of the past in thought and word and metrical form; and therein he is at one with most of the poets in this book. We may grant that it is an important exception: that the movement which is indicated here may be the sober British version of its more daring Italian counterpart. Yet there remains still a difference wide enough and deep enough to disclaim any technical relationship. The root of the matter lies there, however. In Mr Stephens what we may call the poetic instinct of the age works not merely to escape from the past, but to advance into the future--and it has become a conscious, reasoned hope in human destiny. It does not with him so much influence the form of the work as it directs the spirit of it. And that spirit is an absolute and impassioned belief in the future of mankind. Therein he stands contrasted with many of the younger English poets, and with his own compatriots. With many of his compeers the escape has been into their own time, and the noblest thing evolved from that is a grave and tender social conscience. Some, of course, have not escaped at all, and have no wish to do so. Their work has its own soft evening loveliness. But whilst Mr Yeats lives delicately in a romantic past, whilst poor Synge lived tragically in a sardonic present, this poet stands on his hill of vision and cries to the world the good tidings of a promised land. Here it is, from the closing passage of "A Prelude and a Song":