connoisseur could have dreamed of filling himself with raw,
indigestible verse, warm from the maker.

Today, however, editors are paying real money for poetry; publishers
are making a profit on books of verse; and many a young man who, had
he been born earlier, would have sustained life on a crust of bread,
is now sending for the manager to find out how the restaurant dares
try to sell a fellow champagne like this as genuine Pommery Brut.
Naturally this is having a marked effect on the life of the community.
Our children grow to adolescence with the feeling that they can become
poets instead of working. Many an embryo bill clerk has been ruined by
the heady knowledge that poems are paid for at the rate of a dollar a
line. All over the country promising young plasterers and rising young
motormen are throwing up steady jobs in order to devote themselves to
the new profession. On a sunny afternoon down in Washington Square
one's progress is positively impeded by the swarms of young poets
brought out by the warm weather. It is a horrible sight to see those
unfortunate youths, who ought to be sitting happily at desks writing
"Dear Sir, Your favor of the tenth inst. duly received and contents
noted. In reply we beg to state...." wandering about with their
fingers in their hair and their features distorted with the agony of
composition, as they try to find rhymes to "cosmic" and "symbolism."

And, as if matters were not bad enough already, along comes Mr. Edgar
Lee Masters and invents _vers libre_. It is too early yet to
judge the full effects of this man's horrid discovery, but there is no
doubt that he has taken the lid off and unleashed forces over which
none can have any control. All those decent restrictions which used to
check poets have vanished, and who shall say what will be the outcome?