Or he can work it out as a metrical and formal exercise, but he will be disappointed in its content. The New Year's prospect fairly chills his daunting breast.

Two evils, monstrous either one apart, Possessed me, and were long and loath at going: A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart, And in the wood the furious winter blowing.

And if no Lethe flows beneath your casement, And when ten years have not brought full effacement, Philosophy was wrong, and you may meet.

Too much is demanded by the critic, attempted by the poet.

And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined.

And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious.

When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble.