And forgets the lure of the butterflies. 130 And west is east, if you follow the trail to the end; And east is west, if you follow the trail to the end; And the East and the West in the Spring of the World shall blend As a man and a woman that plight And the spring for the West is the will in the wings of a bird; But the spring for the East and the West alike shall be An urge in their bones and an ache in their spirit, a word That shall knit them in one for Time's foison, once they have heard. And do I not hear 140 220 Stands by, alert for flight, to bear his lord 215 For all the bonds shall be broken and rent in sunder, And the soul of man go free Forth with those three Into the lands of wonder; Rejoicing in the road he journeys on 225 230 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. 96 Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring |