Following the modern spirit, the real
poems of the present, ever solidifying and expanding into the future,
must vocalize the vastness and splendor and reality with which
scientism has invested man and the universe, (all that is called
creation) and must henceforth launch humanity into new orbits,
consonant, with that vastness, splendor, and reality, (unknown to
the old poems,) like new systems of orbs, balanced upon themselves,
revolving in limitless space, more subtle than the stars. Poetry, so
largely hitherto and even at present wedded to children's tales, and
to mere amorousness, upholstery and superficial rhyme, will have to
accept, and, while not denying the past, nor the themes of the past,
will be revivified by this tremendous innovation, the kosmic spirit,
which must henceforth, in my opinion, be the background and underlying
impetus, more or less visible, of all first-class songs.
Only, (for me, at any rate, in all my prose and poetry,) joyfully
accepting modern science, and loyally following it without the
slightest hesitation, there remains ever recognized still a higher
flight, a higher fact, the eternal soul of man, (of all else too,) the
spiritual, the religious--which it is to be the greatest office of
scientism, in my opinion, and of future poetry also, to free from
fables, crudities and superstitions, and launch forth in renew'd faith
and scope a hundred fold. To me, the worlds of religiousness, of the
conception of the divine, and of the ideal, though mainly latent,
are just as absolute in humanity and the universe as the world of
chemistry, or anything in the objective worlds.
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