I rave no more ’gainst Time or Fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.”
We were soon deep in a discussion of free verse, no hungry trout ever rising to the fly with more snap than Burroughs. He called the free-verse writers the Reds of American literature, the figure sticking to him, until some months later in California he worked the idea out into a brief newspaper article under that title, the last piece, I think, for publication from his pen.
“Name me one good modern poem,” I said, “moulded on the old forms, with rhyme and meter.”
He let go his knife again, turned his face once more to the rain, through which the mountains were now emerging, and asked,
“Do you know Loveman’s ‘Raining’ and how he wandered up from Georgia to find himself in New York City, his boat gone, or his money gone, or something gone—for he was someway stranded, I believe—and it was raining?” And the old man began—
“‘It isn’t raining rain to me,
It’s raining daffodils;
In every dimpled drop I see
Wild flowers on the hills.