ence, Watching, which will outlive her fame as a narrator. Much good will but slight capacity was brought to the poet's calling by Thomas William Parsons (1819-1892), the translator of Dante. Parsons has neither deep emotion, nor thought, nor melody, nor taste. The poem, Dirge, For One Who Fell in Battle, is characteristic of his commonplace style: Room for a soldier! lay him in the clover; He loved the fields, and they shall be his cover; Make his mound with her who called him once her lover: Where the rain may rain upon it, Where the sun may shine upon it, Far higher in the scale stands Jones Very (1813-1880). He has a spark of the spirit of Transcendentalism, strong Puritanic faitheven if not in the old Puritanic God-and not a little sense for rhythm, which Parsons lacked. His German translator, Albert Ritter, accords him exaggerated appreciation (Jones Very, der Dichter des Christentums, Linz, 1903). William Wetmore Story (1819-1895), who at first pursued law, not without success, then abandoned it, and as a sculptor attained a prominent place, chose by preference, as poet, antique subjects, such as Praxiteles and Phryne and Cleopatra, but never achieved with those more than a feeble rhetoricism. Only where the Puritan blood asserts itself does he find the strong word for the strong feeling. The poem, Io Victis, a hymn to those who have fallen by the wayside, deserves a place among the best verses of American literature. Julia Ward Howe, who would otherwise be classed among the minor poets, had the one great inspiration of her life when, concentrating all the force of emotion, she wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Nothing stronger has flowed from the pen of Whittier himself. Nowhere else, perhaps, do we find so many versifiers who have not received "the call" as in the more modern American literature. Franklin, Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne knew their limitations, and were careful not to exceed them. Not so in the second half of the nineteenth century. Almost every writer of that period essayed poetic flights. This arouses the suspicion in advance that the Americans of that period have not a very exalted conception of the nature of poetry. The prolific Richard Henry Stoddard (1825-1903), whom the American critic Stedman pronounced the most eminent of living American poets, is a typical example of those rhymers who with playful ease translate every occasion, every event, into verse, who are endowed with everything-except spirit and genius. Two thirds of those classed in America as poets belong to this category. Bayard Taylor (1825-1878) was regarded in his lifetime as a great poet, and not in his own country alone; to-day he is as good as forgotten. This discordance between the judgment of his contemporaries and that of posterity finds adequate explanation in Taylor's personality. He was a marvel of temperament and intellectual elasticity: in his versatility, restlessness, and spirit of enterprise, a perfect type of the Yankee. Born on a Pennsylvania farm, and reared to become a farmer, he found means, as a youth of sixteen, to leave his native village and, after all sorts of intermediate ventures, to start on a rambling tour through Europe (1844), busily writing as he travelled. He learned to know England, stayed for a time in Germany, where he mastered the German language, made an excursion to Italy, and wrote-wrote continu ally. His travel-sketches found favor; hence he published them in book form: "Views Afoot; or Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff." Six editions of the book appeared in a single year. This success secured him recognition by the Tribune, a New York journal of high repute, which he fully justified. When the newly discovered gold fields aroused the attention of the world, Taylor was sent there by this paper, and the result was a volume of widely read descriptions, "El Dorado" (1850). The same year he journeyed to the Orient to distract his mind from thoughts of his wife, torn from him by death; and with the little volume, "Poems of the Orient," he became the Bodenstedt of America. Then he was again drawn to the West. In Germany he made the acquaintance of Marie Hansen, daughter of the astronomer, and married her. He devoted himself now with the greatest earnestness to novel writing and met with success here as he had in other literary fields. "Hannah Thurston" (1863), "John Godfrey's Fortunes" (1864), "The Story of Kennett (1866), are brilliantly written, but otherwise fall below the average of American narrative art. Taylor's most ambitious work is "The Picture of St. John" (1867), an autobiographic poem which elicited great admiration. About 1870 his health began to fail; pecuniary cares were an added burden. The evening of a life so rich in fruitful labor passed gloomily in every sense. His appointment as Minister to Germany (1878) seemed to open a brighter prospect; but he was overtaken by death. To-day, three or four decades after his death, his verses sound forced, borrowed, and commonplace. One work alone keeps his name fresh -the translation of Faust; the best, according to many competent judges, in the English language. From the choirs of the last decades a number of women's voices strike the ear with force and charm: Emily Dickinson, Ellen Louise Chandler (-Moulton), Louise Imogen Guiney, Josephine Preston Peabody (-Marks).* 7. THE POETRY OF THE SOUTH It is an observation often made by people acquainted with the country, that the Southern section of the United States is not one iota less *The singling out of these names does not mean to signify the exclusion of others; it is but too easy to miss hearing even eminent singers. |