Late though I come, at last The dress I cast Of my deceit, which hid Till late My soiled estate: All that I did, I did In secrecy. Lord, in my secret places cleanse Thou me! As to the flesh laid bare, the water, led By its own laws of life, bids cleansing spread Doth gravitate Round all which passively submits thereto, So to my heart, Stripped of itself, Thine utmost healing do! face! Against all outward secrecy I pray, RICHARD HOVEY A POET of aggressive virility, aggressive Americanism; a devotee of Nature, not in the abstract but in the concrete, keeping all his five senses in close and intimate communion with mother earth; a lover of women, but also a lover of men, to whom comradeship is more than passion, nay, is passion; a eulogist of vagabondage, of the roving life, of the flannel shirt and the slouch hat; a chanter of irregular rhythms and easy-going staves, inclined to rebel against the trammels of metrical no less than of social form-to whom, if not to Walt Whitman, can this description apply? It applies almost as accurately to Mr. Richard Hovey, whom I am therefore fain to regard as the wearer of Whitman's mantle, the continuer of his tradition. Mr. Hovey, for aught I know, may reject with contumely this literary affiliation. Nowhere, that I remember, does he mention Whitman, or show any consciousness of kinship with him. Nevertheless, the resemblance is unmistakable; and, in Mr. Hovey's place, I should glory in it. Whitman's poetical doctrine, or at any rate his practice, is to be followed in the spirit rather than in the letter; but it would be a misfortune and a reproach to America if his influence were to pass idly away, and leave no abiding mark upon her literature. Let me say at once that it is the spirit rather than the letter of Whitmanism that Mr. Hovey seems to me to represent. He proves his right to throw off the bonds of strict form by the power and grace with which he comports himself under their constraint. Far from despising rhyme, he makes constant use of it, and may even be called a virtuoso in jingles, now Browningesque, now Gilbertianfor instance, the Jongleurs and Barney McGee of More Songs from Vagabondia. There is no lack of culture, and certainly no contempt for it, in Mr. Hovey's work. He does not, like Whitman, reject tradition, and set up to be a law unto himself; but he brings the spirit of Whitman into line with the traditions of English poetry. First let me show what Mr. Hovey can do in ordinary stanza form. He has written two lyrics which seem to me conspicuously admirable both in spirit and in rhythm. The first is included by Mr. E. V. Lucas in his delightful anthology The Open Road; but I cannot leave to Mr. Lucas the credit of having been its "discoverer" on this side of the Atlantic; I had quoted it at least a year earlier in the Pall Mall Magazine. It is entitled THE SEA GIPSY. I am fevered with the sunset, For the wander-thirst is on me There's a schooner in the offing, I must forth again to-morrow! With the sunset I must be Hull down on the trail of rapture Within its limits, this could not be bettered. It is the perfectly musical and imaginative expression of a mood. But there is a larger, deeper inspiration, and a fine individuality of form, in the following lyric from a poem entitled Comrades, "Read at the Sixtieth Annual Convention of the Psi Upsilon Fraternity at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 18, 1893": Comrades, pour the wine to-night, For the parting is with dawn. With the daylight coming on! With a double horn, When strong men drink together! Comrades, gird your swords to-night, And lay him low, When strong men fight together. Comrades, watch the tides to-night, For the sailing is with dawn. With a shout of glee, When strong men roam together. Comrades, give a cheer to-night, For the dying is with dawn. As a friend a friend, When strong men die together. This is not only genuine poetry, but highly original in the true sense of the word. Though staves of a similar tenor have been chanted by the score, Mr. Hovey's song rings out clearly from among them with a note that is all its own. It is not an echo, but a new thing, an absolute addition to our poetical wealth. Good in its way, yet not so good, is the drinking-song in another Dartmouth ode: Give a rouse, then, in the Maytime For a life that knows no fear! Other utterances of the same Viking spirit, if I may call it so, are to be found in The Buccaneers, in the fine lyrical ballad entitled Discovery, and in the song of defeat "There is no escape by the river," quoted at the end of this article. A good deal of Mr. Hovey's best work is to be found in his college odes. The finest, perhaps, is that entitled Spring, written for a Convention of the Psi Upsilon Fraternity, not at Dartmouth, but at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. This is one of the pieces in which Mr. Hovey's kinship with Whitman comes out most unmistakably. It opens thus: I said in my heart, "I am sick of four walls and a ceiling. I have business with the grass. I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling, Lone and high, And the slow clouds go by. I will get me away to the waters that glass The clouds as they pass, To the waters that lie Like the heart of a maiden aware of a doom drawing nigh And dumb for sorcery of impending joy. I will get me away to the woods. Spring, like a huntsman's boy, Halloos along the hillsides and unhoods The falcon in my will. The dogwood calls me, and the sudden thrill And in my veins a pulse that yearns and goads." |