A History of American Literature

And every member of eternity,
The source of God is sending the same stream.
It is my peace that when my life is whole,
God’s life shall be completed and supreme.

The second, with which this volume may well conclude, is in the poet’s own words:

In temporary pain
The age is bearing a new breed
Of men and women, patriots of the world
And one another. Boundaries in vain,
Birthrights and countries, would constrain
The old diversity of seed
To be diversity of soul.
O mighty patriots, maintain
Your loyalty! – till flags unfurled
For battle shall arraign
The traitors who unfurled them, shall remain
And shine over an army with no slain,
And men from every nation shall enroll
And women – in the hardihood of peace!
What can my anger do but cease?
Whom shall I fight and who shall be my enemy
When he is I and I am he?

Let me have done with that old God outside
Who watched with preference and answered prayer,
The Godhead that replied
Now here, now there,
Where heavy cannon were
Or coins of gold!
Let me receive communion with all men,
Acknowledging our one and only soul!
For not till then
Can God be God, till we ourselves are whole.

BOOK LIST

General References

The Younger American Poets. Jessie B. Rittenhouse, 1904.

Tendencies in Modern American Poetry. Amy Lowell, 1917.

The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century. W. L. Phelps, 1918. (Latter half, American Poetry.)

Convention and Revolt in Poetry. G. L. Lowes, 1919.

The New Era in American Poetry. L. Untermeyer, 1919.

Collections

A Little Book of Modern Verse. Edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse.

Some Imagist Poets (three annual volumes in a completed series) 1915, 1916, 1917.

An Anthology of Magazine Verse (annual volumes in a continuing series). Edited by W. S. Braithwaite, since 1915.

The Poetry of the Future. Edited by W. T. Schnittkin.

A Book of Princeton Verse. Edited by Alfred Noyes and Others.

Works of Individual Men

Witter Bynner. Ode to Harvard, 1907; Tiger, 1913; The Little King, 1914; Iphigenia in Tauris, 1915; The New World, 1915; Grenstone Poems, 1917; Any Girl, 1917.

Robert Frost. A Boy’s Will, 1913; North of Boston, 1914; Mountain Interval, 1916.

Richard Hovey. Plays (uniform edition), 1907–1908.

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay. General William Booth Enters into Heaven, 1913; Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty, 1914; The Congo, 1914; The Art of the Moving Picture, 1915; A Handy Guide for Beggars, 1916; The Chinese Nightingale, 1917.

Amy Lowell. A Dome of Many-Colored Glass, 1912; Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, 1914; Six French Poets, 1915; Men, Women and Ghosts, 1916; Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, 1917; Can Grande’s Castle, 1919.

Edgar Lee Masters. Poems, 1898; Maximilian, 1900; The Spoon River Anthology, 1915; Songs and Satires, 1916; The Great Valley, 1916; Toward the Gulf, 1918.

William Vaughn Moody. Poems and Plays. 1912. 2 vols.

Edwin Arlington Robinson. The Children of the Night, 1897; Captain Craig, 1902 and 1915; The Town down the River, 1910; The Man against the Sky, 1916; Prose plays: Van Zorn, 1914; The Porcupine, 1915; Merlin, 1917.

Magazine Articles

The magazine articles on poetry are extremely numerous. From among those since 1900 the following are of special interest:

1900–1904. Poetry and the Stage. H. W. Boynton. Atlantic, Vol. XCII pp. 120–126. July, 1903.

Poetry of a Machine Age. G. S. Lee. Atlantic, Vol. LXXXV, pp. 756–763. June, 1900.

1905–1909. Certain Vagaries of the Poets. Atlantic, Vol. C, pp. 431–432. September, 1907.

On the Slopes of Parnassus. A. Repplier. Atlantic, Vol. CII, pp. 397–403. September, 1908.

Our Strepitous Poets. Nation, Vol. LXXXV, pp. 277–278. Sept. 26, 1907.

Poetry and Elocution. F. B. Gummere. Nation, Vol. LXXXIX, pp. 453–454. Nov. 11, 1909.

State of Pseudo-Poetry at the Present Time. J. A. Macy. Bookman, Vol. XXVII, pp. 513–517. July, 1908.

1910–1914. Democracy and Poetry. Nation, XCIII, pp. 413–414. Nov. 2, 1911.