Cambridge Poets 1900–1913

xiv INTRODUCTION . allowing that my enthusiasm keeps remarkably green for its age , grow apt to tell me that when it comes to particular poets — or at any rate , when it comes to their work , it discriminates less well than of yore : and I make no doubt they are right . Since , right or wrong , they are certain to scan this book more closely , not to say jealously , than the ordinary disinterested reader , I decline taking the risk of detailed praise . A small word of protest will be safer . I note - and may summon almost every page of the book for evidence that the lyrical form nowadays dominates all others ; that even in Mr . Hardy 's Dynasts - yes , and even in Mr . Doughty 's great epic - other forms are perpetually haunted and worried , if not actually tyrannised over , by the lyrical . Indeed a young poet gravely informed me , the other day , that the lyric held the whole future of poesy — every other form being dead ; nor was he abashed on being reminded of the Scottish farmer 's prayer — " O Lord , take everything from everybody else , and give it ALL to me !” I note further that as a part of this tendency ( or, at all events , concurrently ) the Lyric goes on to remove itself more and more from the music of its origin , to ignore the accompaniment of song and instrument , to become reflective , “ subjective ' and , when emotional , intent on its own emotions rather than on its auditors '. Now this tendency seems to me , for several reasons , a mistaken one ; but chiefly for this , that it leaves the poet 's business half done . It is not enough that he is a man more sensitive than his fellows , that he guesses at universal secrets unguessed by them , that his gift pro