It is out of fashion in these days to look backward rather than forward. About the only American given to it is some unreconstructed Southerner, who persists in his regard for a certain terrain, a certain history, and a certain inherited way of living.

But we moderns are impatient and destructive.

For no art and no religion is possible until we make allowances, until we manage to keep quiet the enfant terrible of logic that plays havoc with the other faculties.

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

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.

And a wandering beauty is a blade out of its scabbard.You know how dangerous, gentlemen of threescore?May you know it yet ten more.

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