In America there has been less of this sort of thing openly expressed by genuine poets. Emerson is fairly outspoken, telling us, in The Poet, how the public gapes and jeers at a new vision. But one must go to our border-line poets to find the feeling most candidly put into words. Most of them spurn popularity, asserting that they are too worthwhile to be appreciated. They may be even nauseated by the slight success they manage to achieve, and exclaim,
Yet to know
That we create an Eden for base worms!
If the consciousness of recent writers is dominated by contempt for mankind at large, such a mood is expressed with more caution than formerly. Kipling takes men's stupidity philosophically. [Footnote: See The Story of Ung.] Edgar Lee Masters uses a fictional character as a mask for his remarks on the subject. [Footnote: See Having His Way.] Other poets have expressed themselves with a degree of mildness. [Footnote: See Watts-Dunton, Apollo in Paris; James Stephens, The Market; Henry Newbolt, An Essay in Criticism; William Rose Benét, People.] But of course Ezra Pound is not to be suppressed. He inquires,
Will people accept them?
(i.e., these songs)
As a timorous wench from a centaur
(or a centurion)
Already they flee, howling in terror
* * * * *
Will they be touched with the verisimilitude?
Their virgin stupidity is untemptable.
He adds,
I beg you, my friendly critics,
Do not set about to procure me an audience.
Again he instructs his poems, when they meet the public,
Salute them with your thumbs to your noses.
It is very curious, after such passages, to find him pleading, in another poem,
May my poems be printed this week?