Reform and exchange in English poetry are as slow as in the British constitution itself.

Few realise that English poetry is rather like the British constitution, surrounded by pompous precedents and reverences.

In contrast to our sinking taste, there has been a revival of interest in verse drama in England, Scotland, and elsewhere. The movement has been slow but sure and, above all, modest in its demands.

Irish poetry has lost the ready ear and the comforts of recognition. But we must go on. We must be true to our own minds.

Few in the Nineties would have ventured to prophesy that the remote dim singer of the Celtic Twilight would, in a new age, become the leading poet of the English-speaking world. None have disputed the claim of William Butler Yeats to that title.

Yeats regarded his work as the close of an epoch, and the least of his later lyrics brings the sense of a great occasion. English critics have tried to claim him for their tradition, but, heard closely, his later music has that tremulous lyrical undertone which can be found in the Anglo-Irish eloquence of the eighteenth century.