and in some approach to Whitman's manner is no finer, however, and no more vigorous than the sonnets of 1898 (quoted in the text), in which, with an abounding vigor, he writes of the love of man and woman confronted by sea and storm and fate itself. This poet of Vagabondia and King Arthur's Court seems to have expounded himself in the lines from "Spring" which follow "Give a rouse, then, in the Maytime": A road runs east and a road runs west And the lure of the one is a roving quest, Where the soul like a child in God's arms lies When Stedman published his "Poets of America" in 1885, Richard Hovey was just coming out of college, unknown; and when Stedman published his "American Anthology," in 1900, Hovey was dead. Though most of the biographical notes were the brief and informative work of assistant editors, Mr. Stedman wrote a signed criticism of Hovey, which was conIcluded with these sentences: "Hovey, in fact, was slow to mature, and, when taken off, showed more promise than at any time before. He thought very well of himself, not without reason, and felt that he had enjoyed his Wanderjahr to the full, and that the serious work of his life was straight before him. He was ridding himself, in a measure, of certain affectations that told against him, and at last had a chance, with a university position, to utilize the fruits of a good deal of hard study and reflection, while nearing some best field for the exercise of his specific gift. That his aim was high is shown even by his failures, and in his death there is no doubt that America has lost one of her best-equipped lyrical and dramatic writers. This somewhat extended note may well be accorded to the dead singer, who, on the threshold of the new century that beckoned to him, was bidden to halt and abide with the 'inheritors of unfulfilled renown."" WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY (1869-1910) Moody was born at Spencer, Indiana, July, 1869. His father was a steamboat captain on the Ohio River. In 1871 the family moved to New Albany, Indiana, living here until the death of his mother in his fifteenth and of his father in his seventeenth year. Moody prepared himself for Harvard by alternate study and teaching, and became a member of the class of 1893. He completed his work in three years, and spent the senior year in Europe as tutor for a boy. Like John Hay, to whose early career his own suggests certain points of comparison, he went from the Mississippi Valley to an Eastern college, and there proved not only to be a natural student, but to have the natural aptitude for culture, which is sometimes assumed to be the exclusive heritage of old families. The remaining seventeen years of his life after graduation were marked by prolonged and varied travels, extensive study over a wide range of languages and literatures, a period of eight years' membership in the English department of the University of Chicago, from which his resignation was reluctantly accepted, and, to crown all, versatile creative powers as artist, poet and dramatist. In the summer of 1909, when he seemed at the height of his strength, he was stricken with the fatal illness from which he died in October, 1910. He published frequently in the periodicals from 1890 to 1900. His works were published in book form, during his lifetime, in 1900, 1901, 1904, 1907, 1909. I. Texts. The Masque of Judgment, 1900; Poems, 1901; The Fire Bringer, 1904; The Great Divide (a prose play), 1907; The Faith Healer (a prose play), 1909; The Poems and Poetic Dramas of William Vaughn Moody, with an introduction by J. M. Manly, 1912. II. Biography and Criticism. Introduction by J. M. Manly to Poems and Plays, 2 vols.; Some Letters of William Vaughn Moody, with an introduction, by D. G. Mason. The more significant criticisms in the periodicals include the following: Atlantic, Vol. CXI, p. 79; Dial, Vol. XLIX, p. 317; Vol. LIII, p. 484; Harper's Weekly, Vol. LIV, p. 6; Independent, Vol. LXXIV, p. 314; Nation, Vol. XCI, p. 352; Vol. XCVI, p. 130; Outlook, Vol. XCVI, p. 487; Review of Reviews, Vol. XLVII, p. 372. The total impression received from reading Moody's works is one of more than epic breadth. The view from "Gloucester Moors" suggested the whole earth as a "vast, outbound ship of souls." "Old Pourquoi" sang his challenge to the Norman sky. The poetic dramas are no narrower than the entire scheme of salvation. Yet he did not maintain his widest sympathies at the cost of turning his back on his own time or country. In a perfectly clear, objective way he came to love his mother's country, the Indiana prairies, both for their rich expanse of natural beauty and for the golden corn with which it could "feed a universe at need." Before the vogue of civic celebrations had come on, he marshalled, in the memorable third stanza of the "Ode in Time of Hesitation," the most splendid pageant of America which has yet been written. In that poem of Spring he brings into a few lines a suggestion of all the confident hope he feels for his country's future. The Cape Ann children seeking the arbutus, and the hill lads of Tennessee harking to the wild geese on their northern flight, are one with the youth of Chicago, the renewing green of the wheat fields, the unrolling of the rivers from the white Sierras, the downward creep of Alaskan glaciers, and the perennial palm crown of Hawaii. It is in very truth the eagle nation Milton saw Mewing its mighty youth. His love for America, however, did not dull his sense of the dangers that threatened its youth. Within its boundaries he was well aware of the economic evils which menaced it. They were not peculiar to America, to be sure, but they were dangers none the less. In "Gloucester Moors" he was disturbed, if not made fearful, by the "Sounds from the noisome hold." There was no hope in this poem, only speculation and distress; but in "The Brute," whether it expressed a new-gained confidence, or only a different lyric mood, there was a sweeping optimism. Vicious as the machine-brute was at the moment, he was, after all, only an untamed power for good. Man had not learned how to control him. He was an elephant let loose in the menagerie, trampling and trumpeting, but sure to be recaught and put in harness. He must give each man his portion, each his pride and worthy place; And without its boundaries, America, as a nation among nations, was a land to rejoice in only as long as it was right. In the year when the country was swept into excited jingoism in the first intoxication of imperial outreach, Moody was full of solicitude. He was never so proud as when, in "The Quarry," he recorded John Hay's frustration of the partition of China, yet never more indignant than when he suspected that the proud republic might stoop His upbringing and education had made him too cosmopolitan to allow of his easily falling into Americanism of the Decatur type-"my country, right or wrong." Aside from these explicit poems of time and place, there is little of Moody's verse which may not be regarded as related and preliminary to the poetic dramas. The shorter poems contain the elemental ideas in the plays; they are harbingers which are confirmed and fulfilled by the event. This sequence of three plays gives Moody's theology in terms of the entire plan of salvation. As a whole, and in its details, it is confusing at the first onset, though it yields richly to study, and reveals an ordered philosophy in the end. As often has been the case with literary sequences, this one was not written in the order of its logical progression. Moreover, no scheme of chronology can be imposed upon it, for the successive parts defy any attempts at reconcilement with myth or Scripture. The third part, too, is uncompleted. Yet the reason of the series is apparent, and the plan of the first two parts, together with the light thrown on the third by certain preliminary studies, shows beyond peradventure where the poetic drama, "The Death of Eve," would have concluded. It is characteristic of Moody that he wrought this epic group from his own combination of Christian and pagan material, and characteristic of his method that he did not expound or explain, but left it to the reader to get the meaning clear. The whole is on the theme of the union between God and man, and the consequent incompleteness of either without the other. This unity is threatened by the fact that God could not rest content with peaceful inactivity, and that man, the crowning member of Creation, was himself endowed with what is in fact a divine restlessness. So, in the course of events, heaven became disquieted by the pride and lust and wrangling when the spirits of man were high, and because his pulses when they fell Sang grief, division, terror, shame and loss, To which they pace their souls, and act with joy So the tragic undernote of "The Fire-Bringer" is that when Pandora sings her wonderful lyric of union between God and his creatures, even at that moment man has achieved his apparent victory at the awful cost of disunion with his Creator through Prometheus's theft of fire from the heavens. In "The Masque of Judgment" comes the second stage of the epic. Man, "wanton, unteachable, intolerable," had become the first to vex God, although his dearest pride. God's 'hope to woo him back to obedience was waning. Drooping "white and pitiful" on his throne he saw no recourse except to doom to destruction this very part of himself, for not a creature sinneth, but He weeps His own sin with His creature's. In the end, then, came with the day of doom, a divine error, since Man's violence was earnest of his strength, His sin, a heady overflow, dynamic And sweetened, never broken with the rod! The carrying out of God's judgment was therefore done "with suicidal hand." The final stage was projected, but left uncompleted with "The Death of Eve." It contains the reconciliation of God and man through the voluntary return to Him of Eve-who, in Hebrew literature, is counterpart of Prometheus in Greek-the seeker for knowledge and power which should lift mankind above the brutes, and the consequent breeder of discord between man and God. Her appeal to return to the gates of Eden, which Seth and Abel, living and dead, feared to attempt, was heard by Cain. Together they agreed to make the journey. At this point the drama is left unfinished; but what was to come is revealed in two other poems, both of which serve as prophetic studies. The trilogy was to culminate with the last song of Eve, which was to stand in its peaceful harmony in double contrast with the conflict between Pandora's song and the young men's chorus in the first play, and with the chaotic destruction described in the dialogue between Uriel and Raphael which concludes the second. Toward this he had already made two studies, both of which failed to fulfil what he desired of this final chord, both of which are yet included among his published poems, and neither of which is fully intelligible apart from the whole design of the trilogy. The earlier was the wild and defiant "I am the Woman." Though this begins I am the Woman, ark of the law and its breaker, it progresses to the point of urging obedience on man, revises the selfdescription to and concludes, ark of the law and sacred arm to upbear it, Open to me, O sleeping mother. The gate is heavy and strong. Yet this lyric did not supply the exact word with which to end, for there was a militant defiance in it of a spirit still tameless and only reduced to the acquiescence of spiritual exhaustion. The second study, the dramatic poem, "The Death of Eve," covers, in the rapid narrative of its first ninety lines, the action of the dramatic fragment, and then goes on in its latter part to a new song, perhaps the song with which the whole trilogy might have ended. For in this, although there is still a note of Promethean defiance, it is the glad challenge of the lover who will not be gainsaid: Far off, rebelliously, yet for thy sake, She gathered them, Thou who lovest to break A thousand souls, and shake Their dust along the wind, but sleeplessly Searchest the Bride, fulfilled in limb and feature, Ready and boon to be fulfilled of Thee Thine ample, tameless creature, Against Thy will and word, behold Lord, this is She. The dramatic trilogy, moreover, is not only the result of conscious preliminary studies such as these; it is the summation of the most fundamental convictions about life which he elsewhere recorded without reference to this monumental work. The most striking of these is his theory of and his attitude toward woman. It is his clear belief that the influence of woman is the dominant fact in the history of mankind. In his attitude there are acknowledgments of awe, of reverence, of spiritual love, and of passion. In his theory there is the same evolutionary breadth that characterizes the equation of human life in which she is the greatest factor. In this scheme there are glimpses of the earliest theology of the matriarchate. There is more than a hint of Mirnp ev, the mother of the Gods, when Eve cries out at the last Yea, she whose arm was round the neck of the morning star at song, From this beginning both the songs of Eve progress through the ages when woman is subtly moulded by man's conception of her, so that her happiness and her very being consist in conforming herself to him. Still, still with prayer and ecstacy she strove She might have done with bitterness and blame. |