lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

LYRICALPOETRY"THEVININETIES"FROM Oscar Wilde and The Yellow Book there hasbeen derived and transmitted an impression of thenineties of last century that is, to say the least, partialand misleading. To one who looks back on thoseyears through his own memory, whatever may be hisfinal judgment of relative values, the most startlingphenomenon was, not Wilde, but Rudyard Kipling.Of Wilde, apart from factors that have nothing to dowith literature, one recalls, not the poems, for suchof these as have real merit come later, but the firstof his brilliant essays and his debut as a comic dramatist.Of The Yellow Book little lingers but the nameand the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley. No; whatgave distinction to the last decade of an amazing centurywas the emergence of a series of new poets, eachwith his own peculiar affinities to one or other of thegreat men who were passing away, but each a poet ofmarked individuality, a poet of distinguished achievementand promise, a promise that was or was not tobe fulfilled—William Watson, Robert Louis Stevenson,Rudyard Kipling, W. E. Henley, W. B. Yeats, JohnDavidson, Ronald Campbell Macfie, Francis Thompson,A. E. Housman, and Thomas Hardy. I name themvery much as they rise in my own memory as newexperiences.To discover, before the century ended, any unmistakabledrift toward new horizons and unchartedseas would have been a difficult task. But lookingback, one may discern that the trend of the new cen-122