The Religious Note
As a result of science and the spirit of rationalism, the poet is skeptical about God. Hardy laughs ironically at Him, and Housman does not hesitate to call Him a “brute or a blackguard”. But this does not mean that religion is no longer a source of inspiration in the new poetry. In T.S. Eliot and Francis Thompson we find a revival of Christian mysticism. Masefield’s The Everlasting Mercy has a religious theme and there are many fine devotional lyrics scattered all over his work. Even today there are mystical poets in the tradition of Blake and Wordsworth. Thus D.H. Lawrence has his mystic, “religion of the blood”, and speaks of strange dark gods, W.B. Yeats is a mystic visionary in whose poetry the gods and fairies of Celtic mythology live again, and T.S. Eliot finds the still point in the supernal.
The Metaphysical Note
Besides the influence of science, religion, and mysticism, many other influences are at work on the modern poet. There has been a revival of interest in the poetry of Donne and the other Metaphysical poets of the 17th century. Grierson’s edition of Donne’s poems was published in 1912, and ever since English poetry has reflected more and more intellectual qualities of Donne’s poetry. Eliot has done much to bring about this metaphysical revival. Thus we find in his poetry the same use of startling, far-fetched imagery, the same bringing together of opposites, the same desire to startle and surprise, and thus to capture attention.
The Romantic Note : Symbolism
Despite its stark realism in theme and treatment, there also runs a vein of romanticism in modern poetry, which has filtered through the Pre-Raphaelites and the Decadents of the nineties. Much of Georgian and Edwardian poetry is in the romantic strain. We find this strain of romance in the poetry of Walter De La Mare, John Masefield, Edward Thomas, etc. De L Mare has remarkable sense of the supernatural, and Elory Flecker excels in creating an oriental atmosphere. Masefield and Yeats, with all their earthiness, have the romantic longing for a more perfect world. They would like to escape into a fairyland. Love, a dominant theme of the romantics, has not altogether died out. Robert Bridges has left behind him some fine love lyrics, and W.B. Yeats has been called the greatest love-poet of the 20th century. In France, this note of romance is struck by the French Symbolists, Laforgue, Verlaine, Mellarme, etc. Under the influence of French Symbolists, poets like Yeats and Eliot, make extensive use of symbolism to communicate their visions and sensations, often too complex and intricate to be conveyed in any other way. Such use of symbolism often results in ambiguity and obscurity.
Poetry and the Other Art Forms
Modern poetry has also been influenced by the techniques of music, sculpture, painting and other fine arts. The modern poet freely uses the vocabulary and techniques of the other arts. Thus we find C.E. Cumming reducing his poems to mere typographical designs, and the Sitwells try to imitate the cubist painter. However, it is music which has exercised the profoundest influence. The Sitwells, for example, care more for the second than the meaning of their words. The variations and repetitions in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land are like the movements of a symphony, so that I.A. Richards calls his poetry, the music of ideas. Like a musician’s phrases his ideas are arranged, not that they may tell us something, but that their effects in us may combine into a coherent whole of feeling and attitude. The technique of the cinematograph is also exploited by the poet of The Waste Land. Unrelated scenes are presented to create a dramatic situation, like shots of unrelated scenes in a movie. The movement is speeded up and there are no connections or linking up of passages. Thus the poet today commands a richer and more varied medium of expression than ever before.
Verse Libre : New Techniques
The modern poet is constantly experimenting with new verse forms and poetic-techniques. The use of slang and colloquialism has become common, the language and rhythm of poetry approximate more and more to those of common speech, the bonds of metre have been loosened, and the use of verse-libre has become increasingly common. No rules of rhyme or metre are followed, stresses vary according to emotion, and verse-rhythm is replaced by sense-rhythm. Symbols, often purely personal, are used in abundance to express ‘pure sensations’ and visions, and the result is increased vagueness and obscurity of such poets as Yeats and T.S. Eliot. Under the influence of modern psychologists, Freud, Jung and Bergson, the probing into, and the depiction of, the subconscious and the unconscious has become a commonplace. Emphasis has shifted from the externals to the rendering of the psyche.
Some Innovations

Impressionism, imagism, and Sur-realism are some other innovations in 20th century poetry. The impressionists seek to convey the vague, fleeting sensations passing through their minds by the use of a novel imagery ad metaphor. The imagists, headed by Ezra Pound, aim at clarity of expression through the use of hard, accurate and definite images to convey their intellectual and emotional complexes. The Surrealists try to express whatever passes in the sub-conscious, or even the unconscious, without any control or selection by the conscious. The innovations have influenced the art of Eliot in various ways. All this increases the complexity of modern poetry, and the bafflement of the reader. Such innovations may be dismissed as mere freaks not likely to strike any deep roots. However, the poet today does not care for this : he is extremely sincere and writes according to his own conviction, without caring whether he is appreciated or not.