The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century Part 15

What thought compulsive held the patient sage Till sound of matin bell or evening hymn?

Did visions of the Heavenly Lover swim Before his eyes in youth, or did stern rage Against rash heresy keep green his age?

Had he seen G.o.d, to write so much of Him?

Gone is that irrecoverable mind With all its phantoms, senseless to mankind As a dream's trouble or the speech of birds.

The breath that stirred his lips he soon resigned To windy chaos, and we only find The garnered husks of his disused words.

Robert Underwood Johnson was born at Was.h.i.+ngton, on the twelfth of January, 1853, and took his bachelor's degree at Earlham College, in Indiana, at the age of eighteen. When twenty years old, he became a member of the editorial staff of the _Century Magazine,_ and remained there exactly forty years. His first volume of poems, _The Winter Hour,_ was published in 1891, since which time he has produced many others. Now he is his own publisher, and two attractive books "published by the author" appeared in 1917--_Poems of War and Peace_ and _Italian Rhapsody._

Mr. Johnson is a conservative, by which he would mean that as editor, publicist, and poet, he has tried to maintain the highest standards in art, politics, morality, and religion. Certainly his services to his country have been important; and many good causes that he advocated are now realities. There is no love lost between him and the "new"

school in poetry, and possibly each fails to appreciate what is good in the other.

Moral idealism is the foundation of much of Mr. Johnson's verse; he has written many occasional poems, poems supporting good men and good works, and poems attacking the omnipresent and well-organized forces of evil. I am quite aware that in the eyes of many critics such praise as that d.a.m.ns him beyond hope of redemption; but the interesting fact is, that although he has toiled for righteousness all his life, he is a poet.

His poem, _The Voice of Webster,_ although written years ago, is not only in harmony with contemporary historical judgment (1918) but has a Doric dignity worthy of the subject. There are not a few memorable lines:

Forgetful of the father in the son, Men praised in Lincoln what they blamed in him.

Always the friend of small and oppressed nations, whose fate arouses in him an unquenchable indignation, he published in 1908 paraphrases from the leading poet of Servia. In view of what has happened during the last four years, the first sentence of the preface to these verses, written by Nikola Tesla, has a reinforced emphasis--"Hardly is there a nation which has met with a sadder fate than the Servian." How curious today seems the individual or national pessimism that was so common _before_ 1914! Why did we not realize how (comparatively) happy we were then? h.e.l.l then seems like paradise now. It is as though an athletic pessimist should lose both legs. Shall we learn anything from Edgar's wisdom?

O G.o.ds! Who is't can say "I am at the worst"?

I am worse than e'er I was.

Another poet, who has had a long and honourable career, is Richard Burton. He was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on the fourteenth of March, 1859, and was educated at Trinity and at Johns Hopkins, where he took the doctor's degree in Anglo-Saxon. For the last twenty years he has been Professor of English Literature at the University of Minnesota, and is one of the best teachers and lecturers in the country. He paradoxically found his voice in a volume of original poems called _Dumb in June,_ which appeared in 1895. Since then he has published many books of verse and prose--plays, stories, essays, and lyrics.

He has shown steady development as a poet--_Poems of Earth's Meaning_ (he has the habit of bad t.i.tles), which came out in 1917, is his high-water mark. I am glad that he reprinted in this volume the elegy on the death of Arthur Upson, written in 1910; there is not a false note in it.

The personality of Richard Burton s.h.i.+nes clearly through his work; cheerful manliness and cheerful G.o.dliness. He knows more about human nature than many pretentious diagnosticians; and his gladness in living communicates itself to the reader. Occasionally, as in _Spring Fantasies,_ there is a subtlety easy to miss on a first of careless reading. On the edge of sixty, this poet is doing his best singing and best thinking.

Sometimes an author who has been writing all his life will, under the flashlight of inspiration, reveal deep places by a few words formed into some phrase that burns its way into literature. This is the case with Edwin Markham (born 1852) who has produced many books, but seems destined to be remembered for _The Man With the Hoe_ (1899). His other works are by no means negligible, but that one poem made the whole world kin. To a certain extent, the same may be said of Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x (born 1855). In spite of an excess of sentimentality, which is her besetting sin, she has written much excellent verse. Two sayings, however, will be remembered long after many of her contemporaries are forgotten:

Laugh and the world laughs with you, Weep, and you weep alone.

Furthermore, in these days of world-tragedy, we all owe her a debt of grat.i.tude for being the author of the phrase written many years ago:

No question is ever settled Until it is settled right.

The legitimate successor to James Whitcomb Riley is Edmund Vance Cooke (born 1866). He has the same philosophy of cheerful kindliness, founded on a shrewd knowledge of human nature. Verse is his mother tongue; and occasionally he rises above fluency and ingenuity into the pure air of imagination.

Among America's living veterans should be named with respect Edith M.

Thomas, who has been bravely singing for over thirty years. She was born in Ohio on the twelfth of August, 1854 and her first book of poems appeared in 1885. She is an excellent ill.u.s.tration of just how far talent can go unaccompanied by the divine breath of inspiration.

She has perhaps almost too much facility; she has dignity, good taste, an excellent command of a wide variety of metrical effects; she has read ancient and modern authors, she is a keen observer, she is as alert and inquisitive now, as in the days of her youth; and loves to use her abilities in cultivating the fruits of the spirit. I suspect that with the modesty that so frequently accompanies good taste, she understands her own limitations better than any critic could do.

Her long faithfulness to the Muse ought to be remembered, now that poetry has come into its kingdom.

Among our veteran poets should be numbered also Henry Van d.y.k.e (born 1852). His versatility is so remarkable that it has somewhat obscured his particular merit. His lyric _Reliance_ is spiritually as well as artistically true:

Not to the swift, the race: Not to the strong, the fight: Not to the righteous, perfect grace: Not to the wise, the light.

But often faltering feet Come surest to the goal; And they who walk in darkness meet The sunrise of the soul.

A thousand times by night The Syrian hosts have died; A thousand times the vanquished right Hath risen, glorified.

The truth by wise men sought Was spoken by a child; The alabaster box was brought In trembling hands defiled.

Not from the torch, the gleam, But from the stars above: Not from my heart, life's crystal stream, But from the depths of love.

George E. Woodberry (born 1855), graduate of Harvard, a scholar, literary biographer, and critic of high standing, has been eminent among contemporary American poets since the year 1890, when appeared his book of verse, _The North Sh.o.r.e Watch._ In 1917 an interesting and valuable _Study_ of his poetry appeared, written by Louis V. Ledoux, and accompanied by a carefully minute bibliography. I do not mean to say anything unpleasant about Mr.

Woodberry or the public, when I say that his poetry is too fine for popularity. It is not the raw material of poetry, like that of Carl Sandburg, yet it is not exactly the finished product that pa.s.ses by the common name. It is rather the essence of poetry, the spirit of poetry, a clear flame--almost impalpable. "You may not be worthy to smoke the Arcadia mixture," well--we may not be worthy to read all that Mr. Woodberry Writes. And I am convinced that it is not his fault. His poems of nature and his poems of love speak out of the spirit. He not only never "writes down" to the public, it seems almost as if he intended his verse to be read by some race superior to the present stage of human development.

But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

William Dudley Foulke may fairly be cla.s.sed with the Indiana group. He was born at New York in 1848, but has lived in Indiana since 1876. He has been conspicuous in much political and social service, but the soul of the man is found in his books of verse, most of which have been first printed in England. He is a lifelong student of Petrarch, and has made many excellent translations. His best independent work may be found in a group of poems properly called _Ad Patriam._ I think such a sonnet as _The City's Crown_ is fairly representative:

What makes a city great? Huge piles of stone Heaped heavenward? Vast mult.i.tudes who dwell Within wide circling walls? Palace and throne And riches past the count of man to tell,

And wide domain? Nay, these the empty husk!

True glory dwells where glorious deeds are done, Where great men rise whose names athwart the dusk Of misty centuries gleam like the sun!

In Athens, Sparta, Florence, 'twas the soul That was the city's bright, immortal part, The splendour of the spirit was their goal, Their jewel, the unconquerable heart!

So may the city that I love be great Till every stone shall he articulate.

The early death of Herman Knickerbocker Viele robbed America not only of one of her most brilliant novelists, but of a poet of fine flavour.

In 1903 he published a tall, thin book, _Random Verse,_ that has something of the charm and beauty of _The Inn of the Silver Moon._ In everything that he wrote, Mr. Viele revealed a winsome whimsicality, and a lightness of touch impossible except to true artists. It should also be remembered to his credit that he loved France with an ardour not so frequently expressed then as now. Indeed, he loved her so much that the last four years of agony might have come near to breaking his heart. He was one of the finest spirits of the twentieth century.

Cale Young Rice was born in Kentucky, on the seventh of December, 1872. He is a graduate of c.u.mberland University and of Harvard, and his wife is the famous creator of Mrs. Wiggs. He has been a prolific poet, having produced many dramas and lyrics, which were collected in two stout volumes in 1915. In 1917 appeared two new works, _Trails Sunward_ and _Wraiths and Realities,_ with interesting prefaces, in which the anthologies of the "new" poetry, their makers, editors, and defenders, are heartily cudgelled. Mr. Rice is a conservative in art, and writes in the orthodox manner; although he is not afraid to make metrical experiments.

I like his lyrical pieces better than his dramas. His verse-plays are good, but not supremely good; and I find it difficult to read either blank verse or rimed drama, unless it is in the first cla.s.s, where a.s.suredly Mr. Rice's meritorious efforts do not belong.

His songs are spontaneous, not manufactured. He is a natural singer with such facility that it is rather surprising that the average of his work is so good. A man who writes so much ought, one would think, to be more often than not, commonplace; but the fact is that most of his poems could not be turned into prose without losing their life. He has limitations instead of faults; within his range he may be counted on to give a satisfactory performance. By range I mean of course height rather than breadth. He is at home all over the earth, and his subjects are as varied as his style.

Josephine Preston Peabody (Mrs. Marks) was born at New York, and took her degree at Radcliffe in 1894. For two years she was a member of the English department of Wellesley (two syllables only). Her drama _Marlowe_ (1901) gave her something like fame, though I have always thought it was overrated; it is certainly inferior to _The Death of Marlowe_ (1837), by Richard Hengist Horne. In 1910 her play _The Piper_ won the Stratford-on-Avon prize, and subsequently proved to be one of the most successful plays seen on the American stage in the twentieth century. It was produced by the New Theatre, the finest stock company ever known in America.

Josephine Peabody has written other dramas, and has an enviable reputation as a lyric poet. The burden of her poetry is _Sursum Corda!_ As I read modern verse, I am forced to the conclusion that men and women require a vast deal of comforting. The years preceding the war seem in the retrospect happy, almost a golden age; homesickness for the England, France, Italy, America that existed before 1914 is almost a universal sentiment; yet when we read the verse composed during those days of prosperous tranquillity, when youth seemed comic rather than tragic, we find that half the poets spent their time in lamentation, and the other half in first aid. An enormous number of lyrics speak as though despondency were the normal condition of men and women; are we really all sad when alone, engaged in reading or writing? "Every man is grave alone," said Emerson. I wonder.

So many poets seem to tell us that we ought not absolutely to abandon all hope. The case for living is admittedly a bad one; but the poets beseech us to stick it. Does every man really go down to business in the morning with his jaw set? Does every woman begin the day with compressed lips, determined somehow to pull through till afternoon?

Even the nature poets are always telling us to look at the birds and flowers and cheer up. Is that all botany and zoology are good for?

Have we nothing to learn from nature but--buck up?

I do not mean that Josephine Peabody's poems resemble glad Polyanna, but I was driven to these divagations by the number of cheery lyrics that she has felt it necessary to write. Now I find it almost as depressing to be told that there _is_ hope as to be told that there isn't.

I met Poor Sorrow on the way As I came down the years; I gave him everything I had And looked at him through tears.

"But, Sorrow, give me here again Some little sign to show; For I have given all I own; Yet have I far to go."

Then Sorrow charmed my eyes for me And hallowed them thus far; "Look deep enough in every dark, And you shall see the star."

The first two poems in _The Harvest Moon_ (1916) are very fine; but sometimes I think her best work is found in a field where it is difficult to excel--I mean child poetry. Her _Cradle Song_ is as good as anything of hers I know, though I could wish she had omitted the parenthetical refrain. I hope readers will forgive me--though I know they won't--for saying that _Dormi, dormi tu_ sounds a triumphant exclamation at the sixteenth hole.

An American poet who won twenty-two years ago a reputation with a small volume, who ten years later seemed almost forgotten, and who now deservedly stands higher than ever before is Edwin Arlington Robinson.