The reaction set in at the beginning of the last decade of the
nineteenth century. The passionate urge had spent itself, and in its
place there remained nothing but that minor form of art which concerns
itself less with creation than with re-creation. These re-creators wrote
verse that was precise, scholarly and patently reproductive of their
predecessors. “In 1890,” writes Percy H. Boynton, “the poetry-reading
world was chiefly conscious of the passing of its leading singers for
the last half-century. It was a period when they were recalling
Emerson’s ‘Terminus’ and Longfellow’s ‘Ultima Thule,’ Whittier’s ‘A
Lifetime,’ Tennyson’s ‘Crossing the Bar,’ and Browning’s
‘Asolando.’” ... The poetry of this period (whether it is the hard
chiseled verse of John B. Tabb or the ornate delicacy of Richard Watson
Gilder) breathes a kind of moribund resignation; it is dead because it
detached itself from the actual world, because it attempted to be a
copied embellishment rather than an interpretation of life. But those
who regarded poetry chiefly as a not too energetic indoor-exercise were
not to rule unchallenged. Restlessness was in the air and revolt openly
declared itself with the publication of _Songs from Vagabondia_ (1894),
_More Songs from Vagabondia_ (1896) and _Last Songs from Vagabondia_
(1900). No one could have been more surprised at the tremendous
popularity of these care-free celebrations (the first of the three
collections went through seven rapid editions) than the young authors,
Richard Hovey and Bliss Carman. For theirs was a revolt without a
program, a headlong flight to escape—what? In the very first poem, Hovey
voices their manifesto:
Off with the fetters
That chafe and restrain!
Off with the chain!
Here Art and Letters,
Music and Wine
And Myrtle and Wanda,
The winsome witches,
Blithely combine.
Here is Golconda,
Here are the Indies,
Here we are free—
Free as the wind is,
Free as the sea,
Free!
Free for what? one asks doggedly. Hovey does not answer directly, but
with unflagging buoyancy, whipped up by scorn for the smug ones, he
continues:
I tell you that we,
While you are smirking
And lying and shirking
Life’s duty of duties,
Honest sincerity,
We are in verity
Free!
Free to rejoice
In blisses and beauties!
Free as the voice
Of the wind as it passes!
Free ... _etc._
Free, one concludes, to dwell with Music and Wine, Myrtle and Wanda, Art
and Letters. Free, in short, to follow, with a more athletic energy, the
same ideals as the parlor-poets they gibed so relentlessly. And the new
insurgence triumphed. It was the heartiness, the gypsy jollity, the rush
of high spirits that conquered. Readers of the _Vagabondia_ books were
swept along by their speed faster than by their philosophy.
The enthusiastic acceptance of these new apostles of outdoor vigor was,
however, not as much of an accident as it seemed. On one side, the world
of art, the public was wearied by barren philosophizing set to tinkling
music; on the other, the world of action, it was faced by a staggering
growth of materialism which it feared. Hovey, Carman and their imitators
offered a swift and stirring way out. But it was neither an effectual
nor a permanent escape. The war with Spain, the industrial turmoil, the
growth of social consciousness and new ideas of responsibility made
America look for fresh valuations, more searching songs. Hovey began to
go deeper into himself and his age; in the mid-West, William Vaughn
Moody grappled with the problems of his times only to have his work cut
short by death in 1910. But these two were exceptions; in the main, it
was another interval—two decades of appraisal and expectancy, of pause
and preparation.