INTRODUCTION
ON SOME POTENTIALITIES OF OUR POETRY
BY
PERCY MACKAYE
This book makes its entrance with a new age.
Youth is in the air—youth, the flower-and seed and sustenance of poetry.
At this moment, though the world war is expiring on the verges of physical winter, spiritually peace sweeps towards us tidal with colossal spring, thawing with the break-up of old congealed forms, fluid with warm, fresh currents, fecund with plastic life.
The armistice of the nations is glorious and terrible—with spring.
What shall be the bourgeoning—tomorrow?
Outwardly, the works collected in this volume are not of that tomorrow; yet inwardly they may in some measure forecast its substance and spirit.
Here is a reality achieved, culled from that recent past which we call today. So it will be read and assayed. But here also is something latent, unachieved—a potentiality of today which is the new age in embryo.
Happily for embryos, they are not yet clothed in the fashions; and for potentialities there are no pigeonholes. So, leaving to the critic and scholar their
