hopefully surmise, for example, that a dull spell will not last beyond all reason and experience. The past teaches us what signs indicate the change, — where blue sky will first appear, - and that, if the wind "backs," or proves fickle, a brightening will be temporary and delusive. In the mood of a cautious weather-sage, then, let us examine the late reports from the signal-stations that together show the probCp. "Vic- abilities. In reviewing the poetry of England, the general drift was indicated more plainly by the choir at large than by the solos of a few striking and independent voices. torian Po ets": p. 234. Recent forebodings. I. WHEN Some of our elder poets, their careers felicitously rounded, were taken from us, there soon arose a cry of foreboding. Who, it was asked, are to occupy the places of Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson? What younger men can equal the work executed by those pioneers when the latter were of corresponding age? A period of decline has been predicted. It may be noted, as we seek to determine whether the prediction is well based, that a similar cry is heard from across the sea. The work of Tennyson and the Brownings, in their prime, is contrasted with that of their juniors, and critics are not boastful as to the promise of another saengerfest. I venture to recall that ten years ago I saw the beginning of a poetic dusk, and expressed a belief in its temporary continIt is now generally perceived and lamented; nevertheless it seems to me that it is near an end, and that we may begin to look for a new day. If this is to differ from the last, if we who enjoyed the old fashion shall find it hard to accustom ourselves to the new, the young will speedily interpret uance. DISTRACTING INFLUENCES. Their estimate of relative values will have it for us. 437 and close of our first term. torian Po The rise of Poetry in America, its first noteworthy Duration and somewhat original endeavor, was clearly marked, and in the main coincident with that of the Victorian poetic School abroad. Before long, our poetry took its place with standard literature; its authors won the interest, even the affection, of an attentive public. The close of the term involved may not have been so clear to us. Literary periods shift with mingled sounds, like those of bands following one another at intervals in a procession. But, as in the case of the parallel term abroad, it was defined sufficiently for us now to look back and recognize it. The influences to which was Recapitu due a diversion of interest, and which brought poetic lation of aims and methods into doubt, may be briefly recapit- influences. distracting ulated. They include all that we have seen prevail- Cp. "Vicing throughout Christendom and resulting from its ets": accelerated evolution of knowledge and energy: the 7-29 radical change in the course of imagination, enforced by the advance of science, —the disturbance of tradition and convictions, the leap from romance to realism. We must allow, too, for the diversion of See pp. 17, genius to material conquests, adventure, the creation of fortunes; and for the growth of journalism, and of prose fiction answering to the demands of the time. All the resulting influences are fully as dynamic here as in the Old World, and some of them far more so. But other factors, peculiar to this country, must not be overlooked. The civil war was a general absorb- The War. ent at the crisis when a second group of poets began to form. Their generation pledged itself to the most heroic struggle of the century. The conflict not only checked the rise of a new school, but was followed by a time of languor in which the songs of Apollo 26, 27. Preemp tion. seemed trivial to those who had listened to the shout of Mars. A manly reaction from the taste for rhet oric and sentiment which existed before the war degenerated into the indifferentism lately affected by our clever youths. Those whose lyrical instinct survived through all conditions, and still impelled them to sing, found themselves subject to a novel disadvantage. The favorite senior bards were still in voice; their very longevity, fitting and beautiful as it was, restrained the zeal and postponed the opportunities of pupils who held them in honor. Our common and becoming reverence prevented both the younger writers and the people from suspecting that these veterans were running in grooves and supplying little new; finally, when this was realized, and there was a more A new pub- open field, it became evident that the public was satiated with verse and craved a change, not merely of poets, but to some new form of imaginative literature. Original genius will find an outlet through all hindrances; be the air as it may, its flight will be the eagle's; but it will be apt, at such a time, to take some other direction than that of its predecessors. All in all, the subsequent incitement to lyrical effort was not so effective, nor was the opening so clear, as in the period that favored the rise of Longfellow and his compeers. lic taste. See pp. 54 58. A brief survey In the course of these studies I have referred at some length to a few poets next succeeding those veterans, -some who now, but for the regard shown them by younger contestants, would scarcely realize how surely they are becoming veterans themselves. Thus age succeeds to age, and still Poesy, "blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon, .. leads generations on." It only remains for us to take an outlook, and make PRELIMINARY SURVEY. uisite. 439 note of what poetic activity is discoverable at the now reqpresent time. With respect to my near associates, and to the increasing circle of fresh recruits, whose chances are all before them, I repeat my statement that it would be out of taste and purpose for me to assume the functions of a critical censor or appraiser. The situation can be studied, and some conjecture Its charmade of the future, upon a rapid (and in the main acter. uncritical) summary of what a representative number of these have done and are doing, and I do not think our conclusions can be so well reached in any other way.' II. WHITTIER and Holmes, the two oldest survivors of Emeriti. their group, find their audience still extending with the rapid spread of culture in this land. Their eyes are scarcely dimmed, and their natural strength serves them for periodic flights of song. Lowell's apparent retirement in favor of younger writers, though doubtless only temporary, is the one courtesy they desire him to forego. From Whitman, more picturesque than ever, we have now and then some passing, half-broken, yet harmonic strain, striving to capture the substance of things seen and unseen. I have written already of Next in Taylor, Stoddard, Boker, Trowbridge, and their com- age. See rades, with whom our poetry began to show less of etc. the ethical and polemic fervor that brought their predecessors into repute. No new cause required the lifting up of hands, and they meditated the muse from simple love of beauty and song. Stoddard, al- Stoddard. though a hard-worked man of letters, has been true to his early vows, and adds to our songs of summer in the autumn of his life. Occasionally also he writes, with his old finish and tranquil power, one of those Chap. II., A younger group. William Winter: 1836 Thomas Bailey Aldrich: 1836 sustained and characteristic blank - verse poems in which his faculty is at its highest. Of poets a decade younger, Hayne, Aldrich, Winter, Piatt, Howells, and a few others, still remain. It was their lot to begin at just the time when the country had forsworn peace and its pipings; but they none the less took heart, and did good service in keeping our minstrel line unbroken through good and evil days alike. Winter's extreme poetic temperament, and his loyalty to an ideal, have made his frequent sketches of travel very charming, and have imparted to his dramatic criticisms the grace and proportion for which they are distinguished. The melody, ease, and sincere feeling of his personal tributes and occasional pieces for delivery render them quite unique. The poem read at the dedication of the monument to Poe is an elevated production. His best lyrics have caught the spirit of the early English muse. To Aldrich, now in his sunny prime, the most pointed and exquisite of our lyrical craftsmen,—justly is awarded a place at the head of the younger artschool. He is a poet of inborn taste, a votary of the beautiful, and many of his delicately conceived pieces, that are unexcelled by modern work, were composed in a ruder time, and thus a forecast of the present technical advance. They illustrate the American instinct which unites a Saxon honesty of feeling to that artistic subtilty in which the French surpass the world. Beauty of Though successful in a few poems of a more heroic cast, his essential skill and genius are found in briefer lyrics comparable to faultless specimens of the antique graver's art. Such picces as the "Palabras Cariñosas" and the lines "On an Intaglio Head of Minerva" have a high-bred quality that still keeps them at the head of our vers de société; nor is their his verse and prose. |