General Wilson recalls a remark of Drake’s which explains the lightness and fun of these satirical and burlesque pieces. The young poet had just corrected the proof of some lines he had recently written, when he turned a glowing face to his collaborator and cried out: “Oh, Halleck, isn’t this happiness!” Halleck may be pardoned for writing to his sister: “We have tasted all the pleasures and many of the pains of literary fame and notoriety under the assumed name of ‘The Croakers’; we have had the consolation of seeing and hearing ourselves praised, puffed, eulogized, execrated, and threatened as much, I believe I can say with truth, as any writers since the days of Junius. The whole town has talked of nothing else for three weeks past, and every newspaper has done us the honour to mention us in some way, either of praise or censure, but all uniting in owning our talents and genius.”
The poets, meanwhile, were working individually as well as collectively. In 1819, while the town was still talking about “The Croakers,” “The Culprit Fay,” written in August, 1816, was gaining a wide reputation for Drake, and there were many who hailed him as the coming poet. It was a charming flight of fancy, delicately poised in mid-air, and kept aloft with that ease which is born of native gift and skill in versification. The story runs that Cooper and Halleck, in a warm discussion of the romantic associations of the Scotch lakes and streams and their rich contributions to poetry, declared that American rivers offered no such material to the poet. Drake not only ardently espoused the cause of the American rivers, but in three days’ time re-enforced his argument by writing “The Culprit Fay,” with the Highlands of the Hudson as a background, but bringing in impressions received on the shore of Long Island Sound; frankly confessing his departure from poetic realism in an ingeniously worded note: “The reader will find some of the inhabitants of salt water a little further up the Hudson than they usually travel, but not too far for the purposes of poetry.”
In May, 1819, Drake wrote his popular song, “The American Flag,” which appeared first in the columns of the “Evening Post,” with very warm commendation from the editor: “Sir Philip Sidney said, as Addison tells us, that he could never read the old ballad of ‘Chevy Chase’ without feeling his heart beat within him as at the sound of a trumpet. The following lines, which are to be ranked among the highest inspirations of the Muse, will suggest similar associations in the breast of the gallant American officer.” The praise was a little too ardent, but what the song lacked in poetic quality it made up in the ardor of its patriotism, and it has passed, through the school-books, into the minds of many generations of American boys, and has been proudly declaimed on many platforms. It ought to be remembered that Halleck wrote the closing lines:
Forever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom’s soil beneath our feet,
And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us.
One of the prominent preachers of the town at that time was the Rev. Dr. Samuel H. Cox, a Presbyterian of unadulterated Calvinistic views and the author of the well-known hymn beginning:
We are living, we are dwelling
In a grand and awful time,