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, grow 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 />Henry Austin Dobson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-the-future-of-poetry-2/
