George Meredith made a dichotomy of his readers into "summer flies" and
"swinish grunters." [Footnote: _My Theme_.] Tennyson, being no
naturalist, simply named the public the "many-headed beast." [Footnote:
_In Memoriam_.]

In America there has been less of this sort of thing openly expressed by
genuine poets. Emerson is fairly outspoken, telling us, in _The
Poet_, how the public gapes and jeers at a new vision. But one must
go to our border-line poets to find the feeling most candidly put into
words. Most of them spurn popularity, asserting that they are too
worthwhile to be appreciated. They may be even nauseated by the slight
success they manage to achieve, and exclaim,

Yet to know
That we create an Eden for base worms!

If the consciousness of recent writers is dominated by contempt for
mankind at large, such a mood is expressed with more caution than
formerly. Kipling takes men's stupidity philosophically. [Footnote: See
_The Story of Ung._] Edgar Lee Masters uses a fictional character
as a mask for his remarks on the subject. [Footnote: See _Having His
Way._] Other poets have expressed themselves with a degree of mildness.
[Footnote: See Watts-Dunton, _Apollo in Paris;_ James Stephens, _The
Market;_ Henry Newbolt, _An Essay in Criticism;_ William Rose Benet,
_People._] But of course Ezra Pound is not to be suppressed. He
inquires,

Will people accept them?
(i.e., these songs)
As a timorous wench from a centaur