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Caption: Magazine - English Club The Illinois (1907)
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when he and the new poet walked on Boston Common for two hours disputing the matter. That was nearly half a century ago, and in these davs we have come to be a great deal more Liberal in our views of both questions involved. Our grandfathers seldom called The Song of Solomon or Job poems, but now almost no one would speak of great meditative poems without including Job, or of love peoms without naming The Song of Solomon. 1 have friends who do not like to read any modern poetry soon after Job because it seems formal and stilted, and I generally feel the same about t a k i n g up most poets when Leaves of gross is still fresh in my memory. Meter and rime are coming to mean less to us as necessities than they used to. For most readers these conventions still please more when present in poetry than when away, but a good many people with very sound and true tastes, though liking as much as ever meter and rime where it is found, have let their artistic hearts expand enough to admit fondness for mere rhythm as well. I think W h i t m a n has done more for this new widening of literary toleration than any other man. "How poetical certain passages in Charlotte Bronte's novels ?) u are! says one of my friend , Where will you find finer poetry than in the first eight verses of the last chapter of Ecelesiates?" asks another. ) far, it is true, W h i t m a n has been imitated only a few times, and then with very poor success. The chants of Edward Carpenter, Ernest Crosby, and Horace Traubel mean less tl.au they niighl i cast in conventional forms. The parodists hav riven pretty good reproductions of Whitman's manner, but only one poem I have read shows what Whitman's freedom can do for tin- poet, if he doc . ,2 3
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