The very bats awaken That hang in clusters in Kentucky caves 175 To find her in the open where she smiles. So we are somehow sure, 220 Stands by, alert for flight, to bear his lord 215 For all the bonds shall be broken and rent in sunder, By this dumb turmoil in the soul of man, 225 230 Rejoicing in the road he journeys on As much as in the hope of journey done. And the road runs east, and the road runs west, That his vagrant feet explore; 195 And he knows no haste and he knows no rest, And every mile has a stranger zest 236 Than the miles he trod before; 200 And his heart leaps high in the nascent year 240 The hope of May in a single night, That the Spring, though it shrink back under the bark, But bides its time somewhere in the dark,Though it come not now to its blossoming, By the thrill in his heart he knows the Spring: 245 And the promise it makes perchance too soon It shall keep with its roses yet in June; WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY (1869-1910) Another poet of unfulfilled promise, born in the West and educated in the East,- born in this case in Indiana and educated at Harvard was William Vaughn Moody who at the time of his death at forty-one (a life five years longer than Hovey's) was just coming unto a wide and deserved recognition as a poet and dramatist. Graduating in 1893, he was called two years later to the faculty of Chicago University, as professor of English literature, and remained there until his death. His Masque of Judgment, 1900, and his Poems, made him known to a judicious few, but after his The Great Divide, 1906. a prose drama in which the narrow ideals of the Puritan East are contrasted with the new spirit of the great West, he became widely popular. Another play. The Faith Healer, which followed in 1909, was not so successful. In all of his work despite certain classic influences discernible in his poetic trilogy The Fire Bringer, The Masque of Judgment, and the fragmentary The Death of Eve, there is an intense spirit of Americanism. His task as he conceived it was to interpret the old Puritanism of the New England beginnings, with its self-torturing ideals and its slavery to conscience, and contrast it with the new free conceptions of the great West. His Ode in Time of Hesitation' is his strongest and most sustained poetic composition,- the protest of the conservative and backward looking East against the rising tide of internationalism that seemed from the standpoint of the old Boston régime threatening to sweep over all known landmarks. Heedless; the trees upon the Common show Assurance of her jubilant emprise, Or had its will among the fruits and vines Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. III 26 By justice for us, ere we lift the gage. Up the large ways where death and glory meet, To show all peoples that our shame is done, That once more we are clean and spiritwhole. VI 96 80 V Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage This mountain fortress for no earthly hold Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old 125 Of spiritual wrong, Are noble, and our battles still are won 85 Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong, Or for the end-all of deep arguments Ah no! We have not fallen so. We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know! 'T was only yesterday sick Cuba's cry Came up the tropic wind, 'Now help us, for we die.' Then Alabama heard, And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho Shouted a burning word. 185 Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred, And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth, 190 and young Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan, stung With the old mystic joys 195 And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on, But that the heart of youth is generous,We charge you, ye who lead us, Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain! Turn not their new-world victories to gain! One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays Of their dear praise, 202 205 210 One jot of their pure conquest put to hire, |