It may be set down as an axiom that a nation which is in the proper enjoyment of all its faculties, which is healthy, wealthy, wise, and properly conditioned, must be producing a certain amount of poetry. From the beginning this has been so; it will be so to the end. When England was at her highest, when the best in her was having full play, she produced poets. Right down into the Victorian Era she went on producing them. Then she took to the Stock Exchange and an ostentatious way of life, and the supply of poets fell off. If we except Mr. Swinburne, who does not belong rightfully to this present time, there is not a poet of any parts exercising his function in England to-day. Furthermore, any bookseller will tell you that the demand for poetry-books by new writers has practically ceased to exist. These statements will be called sweeping by a certain school of critics, and I shall be asked to cast my eye round the English nest of singing-birds, and to answer and say whether Mr. So-and-so be not a poet, and Mr. So-and-so, and Mr. So-and-so, and Mr. So-and-so. I shall also be asked to say if I am prepared to deny that of Mr. So-and-so's last volume of verse three hundred copies were actually sold to the booksellers. For the propounders of such questions I have one answer--namely, it may be so. In the meantime let us do our best to find an English poet who is worth the name, and who is prescriptively entitled to be mentioned in the category which begins with Chaucer and ends with Mr. Swinburne. Shall we try Mr. Rudyard Kipling? Tested by sales and the amount of dust he has managed to kick up, Mr. Kipling should be a poet of parts. He is still young, and, happily, among the living; but it cannot be denied that as a poet he has already outlived his reputation. Two years ago he could set the English-speaking nations humming or reciting whatever he chose to put into metre. Some of his little things looked like lasting. Already the majority of them are forgotten. To the next generation, if he be known at all, he will be known as the author of three pieces--_Recessional_, the _L'Envoi_ appended to _Life's Handicap_, and _Mandalay_. What is to become of such verses as the following? 'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor, With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead? She 'as ships on the foam--she 'as millions at 'ome, An' she pays us poor beggars in red. ('Ow poor beggars in red!) There's 'er nick on the cavalry 'orses, There's 'er mark on the medical stores-- An' 'er troopers you'll find with a fair wind be'ind That takes us to various wars. (Poor beggars! barbarious wars!) Then 'ere's to the Widow at Windsor, An' 'ere's to the stores and the guns, The men an' the 'orses what makes up the forces O' Missis Victorier's sons. (Poor beggars! Victorier's sons!)