The New Century's Goddess

The New Century' s Goddess - whom our great-grandchildren or perhaps a still later generation will know, but we shall not - when and how does she reveal herself? What does she look like? What is the theme of her song? Whose heartstrings will she touch? To what heights will she lift her century?

Why so many questions, in a busy day like ours, when poetry is very nearly superfluous, when it is agreed that the many "immortal" productions of today' s poets will, in the future, perhaps exist only in the form of charcoal tracings on a prison wall, seen and read only by a few curiosity seekers?

Poesy is required to serve in the ranks - at least to accept the challenge in party wars, whether it be blood or ink that flows.

But this is only one-sided talk, many will say; poesy has not been entirely forgotten in our time.

No, there are still people who, when they are not busy, are conscious of a desire for poetry, and no sooner do they feel that spiritual rumbling in their respective nobler parts than they promptly go to a bookstore and buy four shillings' worth of poetry of the most approved styles. Others take much pleasure from whatever they can get at a bargain; they are contended with reading the scrap that is on the grocer' s wrapping paper; it is much cheaper, and in our busy time we must take notice of that. There is demand for whatever is supplied, and that is enough! The poetry of the future, as well as the poetry of music, is reckoned with the Don Quixotiana; to speak of it is much like speaking of a voyage of discovery to Uranus.

Time is too short and precious for the mere plays of fantasy, and, to speak seriously for once, what is poetry? These resonant outpourings of feeling and thought, they are only the offspring of nervous vibrations. Enthusiasm, joy, pain, all the movements of the organism, the wise men tell us, are but nerve vibrations. Each of us is but a string instrument.

But who touches the strings? Who causes them to vibrate into sound? The Spirit, the unseen Heavenly Spirit, who echoes in them His emotion, His feelings ; and these are understood by other string instruments, which respond in melting harmonies or clashing dissonances.