There are signs everywhere that we Americans have, by wise living, begun to win back the exuberance which we lost at the rise of the modern city. One of the surest indications of this is the fact that the nation has suddenly begun to read poetry again, very much as the exhausted poetry-lover instinctively turns again to his Palgrave during the third week of vacation. In returning to neglected nature we are returning to the most neglected of the arts. The renaissance of poetry is here. And men like Masefield, Noyes, and Tagore begin to vie in popularity with the moderately popular novelists. Moreover this is only the beginning. Aviation has come and is reminding us of the ancient prophecy of H. G. Wells that the suburbs of a city like New York will now soon extend from Washington to Albany. Urban centers are being diffused fast; but social-mindedness is being diffused faster. Men are wishing more and more to share with each brother man the brimming cup of life. Aircraft and true democracy are on the way to bear all to the land of perpetual exuberance. And on their wings the poet will again mount to that height of authority and esteem from which, in the healthful, athletic days of old, Homer and Sophocles dominated the minds and spirits of their fellow-men. That is to say--he will mount if we let him. In the following chapter I shall endeavor to show why the American poet has as yet scarcely begun to share in the poetry-renaissance. VIII THE JOYFUL HEART FOR POETS _Nothing probably is more dangerous for the human race than science without poetry, civilization without culture._ HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN. _A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke._ MAX EASTMAN. In the last two chapters we have seen the contemporary master of various arts, and the reader of poetry, engaged in cultivating the joyful heart. But there is one artist who has not yet been permitted to join in this agreeable pastime. He is the American poet. And as his inclusion would be an even more joyful thing for his land than for himself, this book may not ignore him. The American poet has not yet begun to keep pace with the poetry-lovers' renaissance. He is no very arresting figure; and therefore you, reader, are already considering a skip to chapter nine. Well, if you are no more interested in him or his possibilities than is the average American consumer of British poetry--I counsel you by all means to skip in peace. But if you are one of the few who discern the promise of a vast power latent in the American poet, and would gladly help in releasing this power for the good of the race, I can show you what is the matter with him and what to do about it.