On the future of poetry

Bards of the Future! 
What will your newest challenge be
To our prose-bound community?
What magic will you find to stir
The limp and languid listener?
Will it be daring and dramatic?
Will it be frankly democratic?

I stand upon the ancient way.
I hold it for a certain thing,
That, blank or rhyming, song must sing;
That the old notes are still the new,
If the musician's touch be true —
That your first theme is Human Life,
Its hopes and fears, its love and strife —
A theme no custom can efface,
Common, but never commonplace;
For this, beyond all doubt, is plain:
The Truth that pleased will please again.

Henry Austin Dobson
1840-1921