Is the future of poetry, as Matthew Arnold prophesied, immense For the answer to this very important question, we must turn to the past, — to man, his nature and his needs as there recorded. If the past answers that poetry has been of immense in?uence upon the life of man, we are warranted by the stability of the forces operative about us and within us, in asserting that poetry will continue to be of immense in?uence; indeed, we cannot, with any show of reason, come to a contrary conclusion.