His most spontaneous and original outbursts are doubtless his Dartmouth lyrics—a series distinctive among college poetry, worthy of a place beside Dr. Holmes's Harvard lyrics—and his rollicking convivial songs that have in them the very soul of good fellowship. There is in all he wrote a Whitman-like masculinity. He could make even so conventional a thing as a sonnet a thing to stir the blood with:
When I am standing on a mountain crest,
Or hold the tiller in the dashing spray,
My love of you leaps foaming in my breast,
Shouts with the winds and sweeps to their foray;
My heart bounds with the horses of the sea,
And plunges in the wild ride of the night,
Flaunts in the teeth of tempest the large glee
That rides out Fate and welcomes gods to flight.
Ho, love! I laugh aloud for love of you,
Glad that our love is fellow to rough weather;
No fretful orchid hot-housed from the dew,
But hale and hearty as the highland heather,
Rejoicing in the wind that stings and thrills,
Comrade of ocean, playmate of the hills.
He is the singer of men—of Western men, red-blooded and free—the very opposite of Cawein. He wrote songs to be sung in barrack rooms and at college reunions—songs of comradeship and masculine joy:
Give a rouse, then, in the Maytime
For a life that knows no fear!
Turn night-time into daytime
With the sunlight of good cheer!
For it's always fair weather
When good fellows get together
With a stein on the table and a good song ringing clear.
And again this
Comrades, give a cheer to-night,
For the dying is with dawn!
Oh, to meet the stars together,
With the silence coming on!
Greet the end
As a friend a friend
When strong men die together.
His Launcelot and Guenevere cycle, which was to be complete in nine dramas, only four of which he lived to finish, though undoubtedly the best was yet to come, has in it enough of strength to make for itself, fragment as it is, a high place in our literature. The dramas are in different key from Tennyson's. In the Idyls of the King the old legend is domesticated and the table round is turned into a tea table. Hovey in his Marriage of Guenevere and The Birth of Galahad puts virile power into his knights, makes of Launcelot the hero of the cycle, and gives to Guenevere a reality that is Shakespearian. Few indeed have been the poets of the younger school who have dared to plan on so grand a scale or to venture to offer something new in a field that has been so thoroughly exploited.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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John James Piatt. (1835–1917.) Poems of Two Friends [with Howells], 1859; The Nests at Washington [with Sarah Morgan Piatt], 1864; Poems in Sunshine and Firelight, 1866; Western Windows and Other Poems, 1869; Landmarks and Other Poems, 1871; Poems of House and Home, 1879; Penciled Fly-Leaves [prose], 1880; Idyls and Lyrics of the Ohio Valley, 1884; The Children Out of Doors [with Mrs. Piatt], 1885; At the Holy Well, 1887; A Book of Gold, 1889; Little New-World Idyls, 1893; The Ghost's Entry and Other Poems, 1895.
James Whitcomb Riley. (1849–1916.) The Old Swimmin'-Hole, 1883; The Boss Girl and Other Sketches, 1886; Afterwhiles, 1887; Pipes o' Pan at Zekesbury, 1889; Rhymes of Childhood Days, 1890; An Old Sweetheart of Mine, 1891; Old Fashioned Roses, 1891; Neighborly Poems on Friendship, Grief, and Farm Life, 1891; Flying Islands of the Night, 1892; Poems Here at Home, 1893; Poems and Yarns [with Edgar Wilson Nye], 1893; Green Fields and Running Brooks, 1893; Armazindy, 1894; The Child World, 1896; Rubaiyat of Doc Sifers, 1897; Poems and Prose Sketches, Homestead Edition, 10 vols., 1897; Child Rhymes, 1898; Love-Lyrics, 1899; Farm Rhymes, 1901; Book of Joyous Children, 1902; A Defective Santa Claus, 1904; His Pa's Romance, 1904; Out to Old Aunt Mary's, 1904; Songs o' Cheer, 1905; While the Heart Beats Young, 1906; Morning, 1907; The Raggedy Man, 1907; The Little Orphant Annie Book, 1908; The Boys of the Old Glee Club, 1908; Songs of Summer, 1908; Old Schoolday Romances, 1909; The Girl I Loved, 1910; Sequire Hawkins's Story, 1910; When She Was About Sixteen, 1911; The Lockerbie Book, 1911; Down Round the River and Other Poems, 1911; A Summer's Day and Other Poems, 1911; When the Frost Is on the Punkin and Other Poems, 1911; All the Year Round, 1912; Knee Deep in June and Other Poems, 1912; The Prayer Perfect and Other Poems, 1912; Good-bye, Jim, 1913; A Song of Long Ago, 1913; He and I, 1913; When My Dreams Come True, 1913; The Rose, 1913; Her Beautiful Eyes, 1913; Away, 1913; Do They Miss Me? 1913; The Riley Baby Book, 1913; Biographical Edition of the Works of James Whitcomb Riley. Complete Works. 1913.
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Henry Cuyler Bunner. (1855–1896.) A Woman of Honor, 1883; Airs from Arcady, and Elsewhere, 1884; In Partnership: Studies in Story-telling [with James Brander Matthews], 1884; Midge, 1886; Story of a New York House, 1887; Short Sixes: Stories to Be Read While the Candle Burns, 1890; Zadoc Pine, and Other Stories, 1891; Rowen: Second-Crop Songs, 1892; Made in France: French Tales Told with a U. S. Twist, 1893; More Short Sixes, 1895; Love in Old Cloathes, and Other Stories, 1896.
Emma Lazarus. (1849–1887.) Poems and Translations, 1866; Admetus, 1871; Alide: a Romance, 1874; The Spagnoletto: a Play, 1876; Heine's Poems and Ballads Songs of a Semite, 1882; Poems of Emma Lazarus, 1888.
Celia Thaxter. (1836–1894.) Poems, 1872; Among the Isles of Shoals, 1873; Drift-weed: Poems, 1878; Poems for Children, 1883; The Cruise of the Mystery, and Other Poems, 1886; An Island Garden, 1894; Poems, Appledore Edition. Edited by Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896; Letters of Celia Thaxter, 1895.
Edith M. Thomas. (1854——.) A New Year's Masque, 1884; The Round Year, 1886; Lyrics and Sonnets, 1887; The Inverted Torch, 1890; Fair Shadow Land, 1893; In Sunshine Land, 1894; In the Young World, 1895; Winter Swallow; with Other Verse, 1896; Dancers and Other Legends and Lyrics, 1903; Cassia, and Other Verse, 1905; Children of Christmas, and Others, 1907; Guest at the Gate, 1909.
Richard Watson Gilder. (1844–1909.) The New Day, 1875; The Celestial Passion, 1878; Lyrics, 1878; The Poet and His Master, and Other Poems, 1878; Lyrics and Other Poems, 1885; Poems, 1887; Two Worlds, and Other Poems, 1891; Great Remembrance, and Other Poems, 1893; Five Books of Song, 1894; For the Country, 1897; In Palestine and Other Poems, 1898; Poems and Inscriptions, 1901; A Christmas Wreath, 1903; In the Heights, 1905; Book of Music, 1906; Fire Divine, 1907; Poems, Household Edition, 1908; Lincoln the Leader, 1909; Grover Cleveland, 1910.
Edward Roland Sill. (1841–1887.) The Hermitage and Other Poems, 1867; Venus of Milo, and Other Poems, 1883; Poems, 1887; The Hermitage, and Later Poems, 1889; Christmas in California: a Poem, 1898; Hermione, and Other Poems, 1899; Prose, 1900; Poems, special edition, 1902; Poems, Household Edition, 1906; The Life of Edward Rowland Sill, by W. B. Parker, 1915.
Robert Burns Wilson. (1850–1916.) Life and Love, 1887; Chant of a Woodland Spirit, 1894; The Shadows of the Trees, 1898; Until the Day Break
Madison Julius Cawein. (1865–1914.) Blooms of the Berry, 1887; The Triumph of Music and Other Lyrics, 1888; Accolon of Gaul and Other Poems, 1889; Lyrics and Idyls, 1890; Days and Dreams, 1891; Poems of Nature and Love, 1893; Intuitions of the Beautiful, 1895; White Snake and Other Poems, from the German, 1895; Garden of Dreams, 1896; Undertones, 1896; Shapes and Shadows, 1898; Myth and Romance, a Book of Verses, 1899; One Day and Another, 1901; Weeds by the Wall, 1901; A Voice on the Wind and Other Poems, 1902; Vale of Tempe; Poems, 1905; In Prose and Verse, 1906; Poems, 5 volumes, 1908; Shadow Garden [a Phantasy] and Other Plays, 1910; So Many Ways, 1911.
Richard Hovey. (1864–1900.) The Laurel: an Ode, 1889; Launcelot and Guenevere: a Poem in Dramas, 1891; Seaward: an Elegy on the Death of Thomas William Parsons, 1893; Songs from Vagabondia [with Bliss Carman], 1894; More Songs from Vagabondia [with Bliss Carman], 1896; The Quest of Merlin, 1898; The Marriage of Guenevere, 1898; The Birth of Galahad, 1898; Along the Trail: Book of Lyrics, 1898; Last Songs from Vagabondia [with Bliss Carman], 1900; Taliesin, 1900; Along the Trail, 1907; Launcelot and Guenevere: a Poem in Dramas, 5 vols., 1907; To the End of the Trail, 1908.