II. THE MODERN POETS

Edwin Markham, born 1852.

Edwin Markham, while a teacher in California, wrote and published a remarkable poem, The Man with the Hoe, which by its rugged strength and elemental feeling achieved an immediate and enduring fame. Interpreting the lesson embodied in Millet's famous painting, this poem expresses the newly aroused sense of social responsibility which characterizes much of the poetry produced during the first decades of the twentieth century. In 1899 Markham removed to New York and engaged in literary work. His first published volume, The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems, appeared in that same year. A second volume, Lincoln, and Other Poems, followed in 1901. The title poem, Lincoln, the Man of the People, ranks as one of the noblest tributes to Lincoln in verse. While none of Markham's later compositions has equalled either of these early poems, few among his contemporaries have approached this poet in dignity or in technical skill. Bliss Carman, born 1861.

Richard Hovey, 1864-1900.

Bliss Carman was born in New Brunswick, but from 1890 until his death in 1929 he was engaged in literary work in the United States. His first collection of nature poems, Low Tide on Grand Pré, appeared in 1893. A Sea Mark (1895) and Ballads of Lost Haven (1897) are in the same vein. Songs from Vagabondia (1894), followed by More Songs from Vagabondia (1896) and Last Songs from Vagabondia (1900), were written in collaboration with his friend, Richard Hovey. Singing the joy of the open road and the freedom of bohemian life, these songs struck a new and wholesome note in American verse. Richard Hovey, a poet of large promise who died at thrity-four, was born in Illinois and educated at Dartmouth. He, too, was a journalist at the time of his collaboration with Bliss Carman in the three volumes mentioned. Besides the Songs from Vagabondia and another collection of lyric verse,Along the Trail (1898), he was the author of a series of poetical dramas dealing with the Arthurian legend: The Quest of Merlin, The Marriage of Guenevere, The Brith of Galahad, and Taliesin (1898-99) -- a dramatic achievement of a high order.

William Vaughn Moody, 1869-1910.

The American poet of highest attainment and greatest promise at the opening of the twentieth century was, without doubt, William Vaughn Moody. He was born in Indiana but received his education in the East and was a graduate of Harvard. From 1895 to 1907 he was instructor and assistant professor at the University of Chicago. Recognition of his poetical gift came with the publication in the Atlantic Monthly (May, 1900) of An Ode Written in Time of Hesitation, which dealt with the popular feeling aroused by the outbreak of the Spanish-American War and the annexation of the Philippines. No finer composition in the field of serious, meditative verse had appeared since Lowell. Confirmation of the judgment regarding the high place he seemed destined to fill in our national literature followed the appearance of his Poems, in 1901. The humanitarian spirit finds strong expression in these compositions, of which Gloucester Moors is an impressive example. A lyrical drama, The Masque of Judgment, had been published in 1900. The Fire-Bringer (1904) followed as a part in the trilogy designed. The Death of Eve, uncompleted, has appeared only as a fragment. These dramas reflect the spirit of Greek tragedy, a dominating influence in the poet's work. Moody later turned to the prose drama, producing two successful plays: The Great Divide (1907) and The Faith Healer (1909). The Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moody (1912) contain his collected works in two volumes.

Poetical Drama.

Percy Wallace MacKaye (born 1875) and Josephine Preston Peabody (1874-1922) have also made notable contributions to our rather scanty store of dramatic verse. Both are also lyric poets of the established tradition. Percy MacKaye, born at New York City, is best known as the author of The Canterbury Pilgrims (1903), Fenris the Wolf (1905), Jeanne D'Arc (1906), Sappho and Phaon (1907), Sinbad the Sailor (1912), The Immigrants (1915), and Caliban: a Masque (1916). His Poems and Plays, collected in two volumes, were published in 1916.

Josephine Preston Peabody, born at New York City, was for a time instructor in English literature in Wellesley College (1901-03). In 1906, Miss Peabody became Mrs. Lionel Marks, and her home was afterward in Cambridge. The Wayfarers, her first lyrical venture, appeared in 1898 and was followed by The Singing Leaves (1903) with other volumes of verse, including The Harvest Moon (war poems, 1916). Her dramas in verse include Fortune and Men's Eyes (1900), Marlowe (1901), The Piper (1909), which adds a fanciful sequel to the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and The Wolf of Gubbio (1913), similarly based upon a legend of St. Francis of Assisi. Edwin Arlington Robinson, born 1869.

Holding a foremost place in the group of those who have given a distinct coloring to contemporary American verse and have evolved a poetical type which we recognize as the product of a new generation, is Edwin Arlington Robinson. His birthplace was in Maine; his later home, New York City. Early volumes, Children of the Night (1897), The Town down the River (1910), and The Man Against the Sky (1916), contain his most significant poems. While preserving the metrical forms of his predecessors, Robinson has developed a mastery of rhythm and acquired a brevity and precision that produce an effect original and startling. This is especially marked in certain short ironical character sketches, vivid portraits like James Wetherell, Richard Cory, Miniver Cheevy, Luke Havergal, How Annandale Went Out: subtle and cynical studies of human failures. Robinson's Collected Poems were published in 1922.

New Voices.

Great poets are rare but writers of graceful verse are many. If we examine any of several recent anthologies of American verse we shall find that the list of authors represented is surprisingly large -- and that, in technique at least, the quality of the verse is surprisingly good. In addition to those already mentioned in the preceding pages, the following are representative of this modern group: Richard Le Gallienne (born 1866), born in England but, since 1902, a resident in the United States and numbered with our American writers in both prose and verse; Thomas A. Daly (born 1871), a journalist in Philadelphia, whose lyrics are brightened with an irresistible humor -- Mia Carlotta and Between Two Loves are popular examples of his success with the dialect of the Italian immigrant; Cale Young Rice (born 1872), a Kentuckian, a writer of dramas and lyrics -- his plays and poems, in two volumes, published in 1915; Witter Bynner (born 1881), of New York, and his friend, Arthur Davidson Ficke (born 1883), whose home is in Davenport, Iowa; John G. Neihardt (born 1881), "laureate poet" of Nebraska; Sara Teasdale (Mrs. Ernst B. Filsinger) (1884-1933), born in St. Louis; William Rose Benét (born 1886), of New York, whose Merchants from Cathay (1913) is notable for its lilting melody and weird effect; Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918), born in New Jersey, best known as the author of Trees; and Alan Seeger (1888-1916), born at New York City, whose impressive poem, I have a Rendezvous with Death, one of the great poems inspired by the World War, was prophetic of the fate of both Seeger and Kilmer.

The student of American literature cannot fail to be impressed by the remarkable quickening of popular interest in poetical composition which is so evident in the opening years of the new century. Poetry was read by an increasing number of readers; publishers became more graciously hospitable to poets; writers of verse multiplied. One of the signs of the times was the success of a monthly publication, Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, established in Chicago by Miss Harriet Monroe in October, 1912, -- its special purpose to give a hearing to young poets. From its start this little magazine has had a noteworthy career. It is not easy to say whether Poetry made the success of the new movement or the new movement, the success of the magazine. Certainly this periodical served to introduce many who had sought publication in vain and to encourage originality and independence in some who would, perhaps, not otherwise have ventured to try their wings at all. Especially did this publication assist the development of free verse.