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[Footnote: See William Ernest Henley, _The Gods are Dead;_ Edmund
Gosse, _On Certain Critics;_ Samuel Waddington, _The Death of Song;_
John Payne, _Double Ballad of the Singers of the Time_(1906).] Only
occasionally a poet rebukes his brethren for this carping attitude. Mrs.
Browning protests, in _Aurora Leigh,_
'Tis ever thus
With times we live in,--evermore too great
To be apprehended near....
I do distrust the poet who discerns
No character or glory in his times,
And trundles back his soul five hundred years.
[Footnote: See Robert Browning, Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 12,
1845.]
And Kipling is a notorious defender of the present generation, but these
two stand almost alone. [Footnote: See also James Elroy Flecker, _Oak
and Olive;_ Max Ehrmann, _Give Me Today._]
Several mythical explanations for the stupidity of the poet's own times
have been offered in verse. Browning says that poetry is like wine; it
must age before it grows sweet. [Footnote: _Epilogue to the Pacchiarotto
Volume.


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