available knowledge is acquired unconsciously. Something
warns him dogged determination however profound can only
result in doggerel. His danger is rhyming trivia. His depth
is the liglitsome blue depth of the air.

But I suppose the special distinction I was going to invest
the poet with, that is making no object of maturity, was a
mistake. It certainly belongs as much to the composer, the
musician, the general, and I'm told the mathematician and the
scientist. And it probably belongs to the scholar. Be that as it
may, all poets I have ever heard of struck their note long
before forty, the deadline for contributions to this book. The
statistics are all in favor of their being as good and lyric as
they will ever be. They may have ceased to be poets by the
time appreciation catches up with them as Matthew Arnold
complains somewhere. (I don't have, to say exactly where be-
cause I'm not a scholar.) I have personal reasons to trust that
they may go phasing on into being as good poets in their
later mental ages. For my country's sake I might wish one or
two of them an old age of epic writing. A good epic would
grace our history. Landor has set an example in prolonging
the lyric out of all bounds.

Maturity will come. We mature. But the point is that it is
at best irrelevant. Young poetry is the breath of parted lips.
For the spirit to survive, the mouth must find how to firm and
not harden. I saw it in two faces in the same drawing room --
one youth in Greek sculpture, the other manhood in modern
painting. They were both noble. The man was no better than
the boy nor worse because he was older. The poets of this
group, many of them my friends and already known to many
of us, need live to write no better, need only wait to be better
known for what they have written.

The reader is more on trial here than they are. He is given
his chance to see if he can tell all by himself without critical
instruction the difference between the poets who wrote be-
cause they thought it would be a good idea to write and
those who couldn't help writing out of a strong weakness for
the muse, as for an elopement with her. There should be
some way to tell that just as there is to tell the excitement of
the morning from the autointoxication of midnight. Any dis-
tinction between maturity and immaturity is not worth mak-
ing unless as a precaution. If school is going to proclaim a

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