The substance of most books of modem verse is the succession of scattered emotions remaining to those who have no philosophy of life, who cannot see the wood for the trees, who suffer the ache of an inner vacuity, who clutch at the passing straw of any transient emotion because that wandering wisp is the only tangible thing in the disorder of their attention. But an ache for something which is not there, a confession of something wanting, a search for some centre on which to repose : none of these is a substitute for a positive quality. It is the absence of a personality which these reveal; they are symptoms, not revelations. The lack which earnestness, striving, purpose (ugly words for ugly vices) betray in life and in prose, this scatter-brained emotionalism betrays in poetry. The first cannot speak, nor the second sing. This explains why we read most contemporary books of verse with impatience, and why, if we read many of them, all sense of standard seems to depart from us.

Here I have tried to make the effort which most readers will hardly be at pains to make for themselves, the effort to diagnose the disorder of which most modern verse is the reflection. Since this dis-ease, with the disillusion which accompanies it, is now endemic, we should recognize its nature and then fortify ourselves by a study of those writers, classical and modern, who in different degrees belong to the true order of poetry.