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THE YOUNGER AMERICAN
POETS
THE
YOUNGER AMERICAN
POETS
BY
JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE
ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1904
Copyright, 1904,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published October, 1904
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A.
To
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON
WHO HAS ENRICHED AMERICAN LITERATURE WITH HER SONG,
AND MY LIFE WITH HER FRIENDSHIP,
THESE STUDIES OF THE YOUNGER POETS
ARE INSCRIBED
WITH THE WARM AFFECTION OF
JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE
FOREWORD
TO attempt, in one volume, to cover theentire field of present-day poetry inAmerica, will be recognized the morereadily as impossible when one reflects that inMr. Stedman’s American Anthology over fivehundred poets are represented, of whom thegreater number are still living and singing.
One may scarcely hope, then, in the spaceof one volume, to include more than a representativegroup, even when confining his studyto the work of the younger poets, for withinthis class would fall the larger contingentnamed above. It has therefore been necessaryto follow a general, though not arbitrary, standardof chronology, of which the most feasibleseemed that adopted by Mr. Archer in his admirablestudy of the English “Poets of theYounger Generation,”—the including only ofsuch as have been born within the last half-century,and whose place is still in the making.The few remaining poets whose art has longsince defined itself, such as Mr. Aldrich, Mr.Stedman, and Mrs. Moulton, need no furtherinterpretation; nor does the long-acknowledgedwork of Mr. Richar