The text is an extract taken from Traditional and Individual Talent an essay published in 1920 by T.S. Eliot and it deals with the tradition's value and the relation between an individual poet and his predecessors.

Eliot presents his thesis inviting the reader to consider the best and originally parts of a new poet's work as personal reworking of what previous poets had already expressed and underlines that the use's of tradition is not a copy act but asks a hard work to internalize the concepts to create a personal idea about them. 

The historical sense implies the past's presence in present (simultaneous concept of time) and the awareness for the poet to be who bring with him the weight of Culture.

Eliot's invites the poet to consider the responsibility to make a new work.