thousands of minor poets, but poetry has ceased to be a minor subject.
Any one mentally alive cannot escape it. Poetry is in the air, and
everybody is catching it. Some American magazines are exclusively
devoted to the printing of contemporary poems; anthologies are
multiplying, not "Keepsakes" and "Books of Gems," but thick volumes
representing the bumper crop of the year. Many poets are reciting
their poems to big, eager, enthusiastic audiences, and the atmosphere
is charged with the melodies of ubiquitous minstrelsy.

The time is ripe for the appearance of a great poet. A vast audience
is gazing expectantly at a stage crowded with subordinate actors,
waiting or the Master to appear. The Greek dramatists were sure of
their public; so were the Russian novelists; so were the German
musicians. The "conditions" for poetry are intensified by reason of
the Great War. We have got everything except the Genius. And the
paradox is that although the Genius may arise out of right conditions,
he may not; he may come like a thief in the night. The contrast
between public interest in poetry in 1918 and in 1830, for an
illustration, is unescapable. At that time the critics and the
magazine writers assured the world that "poetry is dead." Ambitious
young authors were gravely advised not to attempt anything in
verse--as though youth ever listened to advice! Many critics went so
far as to insist that the temper of the age was not "adapted" to
poetry, that not only was there no interest in it, but that even if
the Man should appear, he would find it impossible to sing in such a
time and to such a coldly indifferent audience. And yet at that
precise moment, Tennyson launched his "chiefly lyrical" volume, and
Browning was speedily to follow.

Man is ever made humble by the facts of life; and even literary