critics cannot altogether ignore them. Let us not then make the
mistake of being too sure of the immediate future; nor the mistake of
overestimating our contemporary poets; nor the mistake of despising
the giant Victorians. Let us devoutly thank God that poetry has come
into its own; that the modern poet, in public estimation, is a Hero;
that no one has to apologize either for reading or for writing verse.
An age that loves poetry with the passion characteristic of the
twentieth century is not a flat or materialistic age. We are not
disobedient unto the heavenly vision.

In the world of thought and spirit this is essentially a fighting age.
The old battle between the body and the soul, between Paganism and
Christianity, was never so hot as now, and those who take refuge in
neutrality receive contempt. Pan and Jesus Christ have never had so
many enthusiastic followers. We Christians believe our Leader rose
from the dead, and the followers of Pan say their god never died at
all. It is significant that at the beginning of the twentieth century
two English poets wrote side by side, each of whom unconsciously waged
an irreconcilable conflict with the other, and each of whom speaks
from the grave today to a concourse of followers. These two poets did
not "flourish" in the twentieth century, because the disciple of the
bodily Pan was a cripple, and the disciple of the spiritual Christ was
a gutter-snipe; but they both lived, lived abundantly, and wrote real
poetry. I refer to William Ernest Henley, who died in 1903, and to
Francis Thompson, who died in 1907.

Both Henley and Thompson loved the crowded streets of London, but they
saw different visions there. Henley felt in the dust and din of the
city the irresistible urge of spring, the invasion of the smell of
distant meadows; the hurly-burly bearing witness to the annual