_Really_ hungry! Good Lord deliver us,
The Unicorn is not _carnivorous_!
_John Hall Wheelock_
John Hall Wheelock was born at Far Rockaway, Long Island, in 1886.
He was graduated from Harvard, receiving his B.A. in 1908, and
finished his studies at the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin,
1908-10.
Wheelock’s first book is, in many respects, his best. _The Human
Fantasy_ (1911) sings with the voice of youth—a youth which is
vibrantly, even vociferously, in love with existence. Rhapsodic and
obviously influenced by Whitman and Henley, these lines beat
bravely; a singing buoyance arrests one upon opening the volume. A
headlong ecstasy rises from pages whose refrain is “Splendid it is
to live and glorious to die.” _The Beloved Adventure_ (1912) is less
powerful but scarcely less passionate. Lyric after lyric moves one
by its athletic music and spiritual intensity.
Wheelock’s subsequent volumes are less individualized. _Love and
Liberation_ (1913) and _Dust and Light_ (1919) are long dilutions of
the earlier strain. The music is still here, but most of the magic
has gone. Wheelock has allowed himself to be exploited by his own
fluency, and the result is unbelievably monotonous. Yet even vast
stretches of two hundred and thirty unvaried love songs cannot bury
a dozen or more vivid poems which lie, half-concealed, in a waste of
verbiage.
In spite of his lapses and lack of selective taste, Wheelock is
often a stirring lyricist. _The Human Fantasy_ is one of the most
remarkable “first” books of the period.