Finally: Howe contributed to the Nativistic creative literature of Canada considerable journalistic verse which, in virtue of its humanity, and sincerity, its imaginative beauties, pleasing conceits and sentiments, and flowing rhythms (though it lacks somewhat in original verbal music) is quite on the plane of the journalistic verse of the 18th century neo-classical school, especially the verse of Goldsmith, upon which most of the verse of Howe was modelled. Howe wrote inspiriting Imperial verse, as, for instance, his Flag of Old England, a really fine example of patriotic poetry. He wrote colorful and musical descriptive verse, as, for instance, his long unfinished poem Acadia (in the 18th century rhymed couplet). He wrote infectious humorous poetry, as, for instance, The Blue Nose, To Mary, A Toast (to Haliburton), which is as near poetry as that species of verse ever reaches.
If Johnson and Goldsmith raised journalistic verse to the plane of poetry, so did Joseph Howe. Or, concretely, if Goldsmith’s Deserted Village is authentic poetry, so is Howe’s Acadia. Consider this excerpt from Howe’s Acadia:—
Pearl of the West!—since first my soul awoke
And on my eyes thy sylvan beauties broke,
Since the warm current of my youthful blood
Flowed on, thy charms, of mountain, mead, and flood
Have been to me most dear. Each winning grace
E’en in my childish hours I loved to trace,
And, as in boyhood, o’er thy hills I strode,
Or on thy foaming billows proudly rode,