Bards of the Future! you that come <br /> With striding march, and roll of drum, <br /> What will your newest challenge be <br /> To our prose-bound community? <br /> What magic will you find to stir <br /> The limp and languid listener? <br /> Will it be daring and dramatic? <br /> Will it be frankly democratic? <br /> Will Pegasus return again <br />In guise of modern aeroplane, <br />Descending from a cloudless blue <br />To drop on us a bomb or two? <br />I know not. Far be it from me <br />To darken dark futurity; <br />Still less to render more perplexed <br />The last vagary, or the next. <br />Leave Pindus Hill to those who list, <br />Iconoclast or anarchist -- <br />So be it. "They that break shall pay." <br />I stand upon the ancient way. <br />I hold it for a certain thing, <br />That, blank or rhyming, song must sing; <br />And more, that what is good for verse, <br />Need not, by dint of rhyme, frow worse. <br />I hold that they who deal in rhyme <br />Must take the standpoint of the time -- <br />But not to catch the public ear, <br />As mountebank or pulpiteer; <br />That the old notes are still the new, <br />If the musician's touch be true -- <br />Nor can the hand that knows its trade <br />Achieve the trite and ready-made; <br />That your first theme is Human Life, <br />Its hopes and fears, its love and strife -- <br />A theme no custom can efface, <br />Common, but never commonplace; <br />For this, beyond all doubt, is plain: <br />The Truth that pleased will please again, <br />And move men as in bygone years <br />When Hector's wife smiled through her tears.<br /><br />Austin Henry Dobson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-the-future-of-poetry/
