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The Little Bookfellow Series 
 
 Laureate Address 
 
Other titles in this series are : 
 
 ESTRAYS, by Thomas Kennedy, George Seymour, 
 Vincent Starrett and Basil Thompson. 
 
 WILLIAM DE MORGAN, a Post-Victorian Eealist, by 
 Flora Warren Seymour. 
 
 LYRICS, by Laura Blackburn. 
 
 STEVENSON AT MANASQUAN, by Charlotte Eaton. 
 
 CANDLES IN THE SUN, by William Griffith. 
 
Laureate Address 
 
 of John G. Neihardt 
 
 Upon Official Notification of His 
 Choice as Poet Laureate of Nebraska 
 
 CHICAGO 
 THE BOOKFELLOWS 
 
 1921 
 
Of this first edition, five hundred copies have been 
 printed in the month of November, 1921. 
 
 Copyright 1921 
 by Flora Warren Seymour 
 
 THE TORCH PRESS 
 
 CEDAR RAPIDS 
 
 IOWA 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE OCCASION 9 
 
 THE ADDRESS 15 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY WORKS OF JOHN G. NEIHARDT 47 
 
The Occasion 
 
On April 18th, 1921, the Senate and House of 
 Representatives of the Nebraska legislature passed a 
 joint and concurrent resolution naming John G. Nei- 
 hardt Poet Laureate of Nebraska, in recognition of 
 the American Epic Cycle upon which he has been 
 engaged for eight years. 
 
 On June 18th, 1921, the official notification cere- 
 mony, conducted by representatives of the state gov- 
 ernment and the State University, was held in the 
 Temple Theatre at Lincoln, Prof. A. A. Reed presid- 
 ing. Professor Reed, after stating the purpose of 
 the meeting, introduced Dean L. A. Sherman, who 
 represented the University as Acting Chancellor. 
 Dean Sherman said: 
 
We have unique grounds for congratulat- 
 ing ourselves upon the occasion which calls 
 us together on this eighteenth of June, 1921. 
 It is an auspicious date and day for the 
 Commonwealth of Nebraska, No other state, 
 it appears, has, by legislative recognition, 
 a poet laureate. No other state, we may 
 fairly say, has such a reason. Nature has 
 not shaped for us, in this paradise of prairie 
 country, mountains that might become by 
 myth or fancy, the home of gods or muses. 
 There is, there can be, no Olympus, no Par- 
 nassus here. But we have that which has 
 given fame to all the sacred groves and moun- 
 tains and fountains of spiritual history. We 
 have the poet himself in presence with us 
 now. 
 
 The ceremonial that we are assembled to 
 witness is by no means a novel one. In the 
 days when Parnassus was, in the youth time 
 of the arts, sons of Apollo were crowned pub- 
 licly with his laurel. And so at the end of 
 the middle age was Petrarch crowned at the 
 Capitol in Rome. Were our own great new 
 Capitol finished, it would have been fitting 
 that the first Poet Laureate of Nebraska 
 should have been honored at or within its 
 portals. We of the University think our- 
 selves fortunate to offer as its substitute this 
 meeting place. I have pleasure of presenting 
 here the Honorable E. P. Brown, who as the 
 representative of his Excellency, Governor 
 McKelvie, will deliver the address of noti- 
 fication. 
 
Mr. Brown then read from an engrossed copy the 
 resolution of the Legislature: 
 
 HOUSE BOLL NO. 467 
 
 Introduced by George C. Snow of Dawes County. 
 TITLE : A Bill for a Joint and Concurrent Resolution 
 declaring John G. Neihardt the poet laureate of 
 Nebraska. 
 
 WHEREAS, there is the closest connection between 
 the growth of civilization and the development of 
 literature ; and 
 
 WHEREAS, wise commonwealths, in all ages, have 
 recognized this relation by lifting the poet to the 
 same plane as the statesman and military chieftain; 
 and 
 
 WHEREAS, John G. Neihardt, a citizen of Ne- 
 braska, has written a national epic wherein he has 
 developed the mood of courage with which our pio- 
 neers explored and subdued our plains, and thus has 
 inspired in Americans that love of the land and its 
 heroes whereby great national traditions are built 
 and perpetuated; and 
 
 WHEREAS, our people wish to exalt such gifts of 
 the human spirit; therefore be it 
 
 RESOLVED AND ENACTED, by the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, the Senate concurring, that John G. 
 Neihardt be, and hereby is, declared poet laureate 
 of Nebraska. 
 
 WALTER L. ANDERSON, 
 
 Speaker of the House. 
 F. P. CORRICK, 
 
 Chief Clerk of the House. 
 PELHAM A. BARROWS, 
 
 President of the Senate. 
 CLYDE H. BARNARD, 
 
 Secretary of the Senate. 
 Approved April 21, 1921, 12:30 o'clock P.M. 
 
 SAMUEL R. MCKELVIE, 
 
 Governor. 
 
Mr. Reed 9 then addressing Mr. Neihardt, spoke as 
 follows: 
 
 We are met formally to complete the action 
 of the representatives of the people of the 
 State in designating you Poet Laureate of 
 Nebraska, an action based upon their rec- 
 ognition of the eminence you have obtained 
 in your art. To this end I am clothed with 
 the full authority of the Governor and bear 
 his commands to tender you, as I now do, 
 formal and official notice of your appoint- 
 ment, and also to offer you assurance that 
 the action carries with it from the people of 
 your State their respect, their admiration 
 and their love. 
 
 Thereupon Mr. Neihardt, after expressing appreci- 
 ation of the honor, delivered the following address: 
 
The Address 
 
LAUREATE ADDRESS 
 
 I want to talk to you about the technique of Poetry 
 and the relation of that art to education and the 
 social process in general. In order that you may be 
 able to judge as to the relevance of my remarks, 1 
 must first tell you what I understand by the word 
 "education." 
 
 Were the definition, that I hold, my own, I would 
 not presume to offer it here ; but I need only find the 
 proper words with which to express the common 
 opinion of many seers in many times and countries; 
 and this, unfortunately, seems now to be necessary, 
 for we have been living in one of the most materialistic 
 ages that have ever been known, and of the many 
 ideals that have suffered, that of education has not 
 suffered least. 
 
 I would say that education is fundamentally a 
 spiritual process. In its proper function it is con- 
 cerned less with the problem of acquiring the means 
 of life than with the far more difficult one of knowing 
 what to do with life after one is in possession o the 
 means to live. We have heard much of practical edu- 
 cation ; and there is no fault to find with the expres- 
 sion ; for ' i practical ' ' means that which will work, 
 and surely only that which will work may be regard- 
 
 15 
 
ed as good. But there Las been something radically 
 wrong with our understanding of the word "practi- 
 cal." Owing to the tremendous economic pressure of 
 our individualistic social system, we have been forced 
 to interpret the word as meaning that which con- 
 tributes directly to material success; and for a great 
 many people practical education has come to signify 
 that mental training which is calculated to give the 
 maximum of income in the minimum of time. 
 
 Obviously, if that conception be a true one, a 
 human being is little more than a machine designed 
 for the purpose of diverting to his own uses as great 
 a portion of the world's stream of wealth as may 
 be possible under the circumstances. Thus, the em- 
 phasis of life is placed upon a purely material scale 
 of values which is the scale of the brute. That 
 conception of education results in the classification 
 of men and women by what they possess rather than 
 by what they are; and it is a matter of common know- 
 ledge that, in the anarchic scramble for possession of 
 material things, it is not infrequently the admittedly 
 lower type of man that arouses the envy of the 
 neighborhood. In that scramble of the acquisitive 
 instincts, to cherish the higher values as evolved 
 through ages of race experience, is to insure defeat. 
 In that scramble, conscience and human sympathy 
 and all the priceless imponderabilia of the soul be- 
 come as a mill-stone hung about the neck of him who 
 holds them dear. Furthermore, however much a 
 man, as viewed by the envious eyes of his neighbors, 
 may gain in apparent worth by the possession of 
 
 16 
 
material things, it remains true that not one jot is 
 added to the real stature of the man by virtue of 
 that possession ; for a man can be no other than that 
 which he truly is, as distinguished from what he has. 
 And it is with what a man is that is to say, with 
 personality that education must be chiefly con- 
 cerned. It is the process of making a man rich in 
 the only values that can not be acquired by accident, 
 or theft in any of its many disguises, and that can not 
 be lost by such means. And in what do these values 
 consist? In that complex of spiritual and mental 
 attitudes that have resulted from man's age-long 
 struggle. And in this sense, it is the prime function 
 of education to make men social beings ; to make them, 
 insofar as may be possible, citizens of all time and of 
 all countries; to give them the widest possible com- 
 prehension of a man's relation to other men and to 
 his physical environment; to substitute sympathy for 
 prejudice in the list of human motives. In other 
 words, the consciousness of the individual must be ex- 
 tended to include the race consciousness. It 1 must be 
 made possible for the one to live vicariously the life 
 of the many from the beginning. 
 
 It will be said by some that this is a large order, 
 indeed; but it must be remembered that education is 
 not an end, but rather an endless process, a manner of 
 becoming, a spiritual direction. The fundamental 
 importance of World Literature in this connection 
 ought to be obvious. Institutions of learning are de- 
 vices for facilitating the educational process ; but in- 
 sofar as they neglect World Literature, they fall short 
 
 17 
 
of their purpose ; for what is World Literature but a 
 record of the continuous consciousness of the race? 
 And what is Science but a running commentary on 
 that tremendous text? 
 
 It may be remarked by some that this is old fash- 
 ioned Humanism, impractical in the modern world. 
 It is not Humanism that is impractical, but rather the 
 debased ideals of our materialistic society ; for what is 
 it that all men seek if it be not happiness ? And what 
 is happiness but the spiritual result of harmonious 
 adjustment to the world of men and things? And 
 can one logically hope to achieve that state through a 
 material process ? A thousand seers have agreed that 
 happiness does not come from without; that it is not 
 something to be pursued and captured; that posses- 
 sion of things can not produce it; that the desire to 
 possess is like a flame growing upon the fuel that 
 feeds it, or like one's own shadow that one pursues in 
 vain. A certain amount of material goods is neces- 
 sary to existence ; but the needed amount is not great, 
 and what could be less wise than to spend one 's life in 
 acquiring the means of life, and neglecting to live ? 
 
 It is especially fitting that this view of Education 
 should be emphasized at this time when the word 
 "Democracy" is in every mouth. Though Democ- 
 racy is fundamentally an economic concept, concerned 
 with the nice adjustment of individual rights and 
 duties that all may contribute to, and justly share, 
 the means of life ; yet its ultimate purpose transcends 
 the grosser world and emphasizes; the equality of op- 
 portunity in the spiritual realm as well. The so- 
 
 18 
 
called "practical" education is too much concerned 
 with the economic world, too little with the more im- 
 portant business of the soul. As it is generally un- 
 derstood today, practical education is essentially a 
 process calculated to make efficient serfs for a Bour- 
 geois social system that now seems doomed to pass 
 away, as the result of its culminating catastrophe in 
 August, 1914. The education of the future should 
 not make us less efficient in the economic realm; but 
 it should certainly make it possible for all to share 
 that priceless racial inheritance, which, as I have been 
 saying, is the very essence of genuine education. 
 
 Now let us proceed to the discussion of Poetry. 
 
 In this scientific age men justly demand that noth- 
 ing shall survive without some utilitarian justification. 
 If it could be shown that poetry performs no import- 
 ant function in the social process, I should be among 
 the first to insist that the writing of it be interdicted 
 and that poets be set to useful tasks. Happily, how- 
 ever, poetry does not suffer under the pragmatic test, 
 as I hope to show. 
 
 You will agree with me in defining Language as a 
 means for communicating states of consciousness. 
 Now if all states of consciousness were capable of 
 communication by direct factual statement, then the 
 study of Language would indeed be no more than the 
 study of words arranged according to the rules of 
 Grammar and Syntax. But you have all noted that 
 in the higher realms of human utterance, certain 
 effects are obtained that can not be explained satis- 
 factorily by the most industrious parsing and analysis. 
 
 19 
 
Something subtle and powerful somehow escapes be- 
 tween your nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, ad- 
 verbs, prepositions and conjunctions. Something is 
 present in the greater moments of human utterance 
 that quite eludes your finest mesh of case, number, 
 tense, mode. At such moments, you become aware 
 that it is a mere skeleton you have been analyzing, 
 and that some mysterious spirit lives among those dry 
 bones. At such moments it is apparent that one 
 might as well hope to explain the Jilneid by analyzing 
 the food that Virgil ate, as to account, by means of 
 mere verbal mechanics, for the miracle that has hap- 
 pened among your words. 
 
 And what is this miracle that Grammar and Syntax 
 can not explain? It is the universal language, "the 
 language of all the world/' as Professor Woodberry 
 has called it, bearing something like the same relation 
 to the language of words that perfume bears to the 
 rose. It operates in modern English or French or 
 German or Spanish or Italian in accordance with the 
 same laws that governed it in the ancient Sanskrit or 
 Greek. However the historical tongues may develop, 
 merge into new tongues and cease to be, that one mode 
 of human utterance remains ; for it is based upon no 
 mutable convention in time, upon no chance of racial 
 triumph or defeat, and is unconcerned with geographi- 
 cal boundary lines. It is firmly grounded in funda- 
 mental human nature, and the devices through which 
 it functions are characteristic of, and attain their 
 highest potency in, poetry. 
 
 It has been remarked that "we are all islands 
 
 20 
 
shouting lies to each other across seas of misunder- 
 standing. 7 ' Stripped of its obvious hyperbole, the 
 statement will be found to contain an important truth. 
 From the first conscious attempt to convey an urgent 
 meaning by means of onomatopoeic grunts, to the lat- 
 est literary masterpiece, language has been an inade- 
 quate means of communication ; x for always as lan- 
 guage developed, the psychic complexes that consti- 
 tute consciousness became more subtle and increasing- 
 ly difficult to express. Thought outruns utterance 
 for the apparent reason that while language has 
 developed under the pressure of fundamental human 
 need, the restless, dreaming soul of man has always 
 groped for values unrelated to physical necessity. 
 As Bergson would say, the basic structure of lan- 
 guage is utilitarian. Evidence of this is to be found 
 in the fact that the nose, a sense organ relatively un- 
 important in mankind's struggle for survival, has no 
 vocabulary of its own ; while the eye, the ear and the 
 mouth, being of tremendous importance in the strug- 
 gle to survive, are richly endowed with words. 
 
 Now, so long as men communicate only such ideas 
 as are more or less directly concerned with funda- 
 mental human needs; so long as men are satisfied to 
 discuss only certain phases of concrete reality, no 
 confusion ensues. Those words, and their combina- 
 tions, that are concerned immediately with the two 
 great facts of human life food and propagation 
 admit of no misunderstanding. But man is master 
 of the earth solely because he is gifted with the power 
 
 i See F. W. H. Myers ' essay on Virgil. 
 21 
 
to dream constructively, transcending his physical 
 environment ; and, accordingly, the dictionaries of the 
 world record numerous attempts, only partially suc- 
 cessful, to express in soundi the discoveries that have 
 resulted from this high adventuring of the human 
 soul. But it is known that limitation may be in itself 
 a means to power ; and out of the very inadequacy of 
 language has grown its supreme mode of expression 
 which is Poetry. That Poetry is indeed the su- 
 preme form of human expression is amply evidenced 
 by the fact that in every age and country the racial 
 consciousness has been most fully realized through 
 the poet's art. Consider the Mahabharrata, Job, the 
 Shah Nameh, the Homeric poems, the Athenian 
 dramas, the ^Eneid, The Divine Comedy, Faust, the 
 Plays of Shakespeare ! In passing it may be interest- 
 ing to note how the theories of relativity and four- 
 dimensional space seem to support the contention that 
 poetry is the supreme art. Music, it may be said, 
 exists in one dimension, Time ; Painting in two dimen- 
 sions with the illusion of a third ; Sculpture, in three ; 
 while Poetry not only exists in a three dimensional 
 world, but moves in it, thus adding a fourth dimen- 
 sion, Time. 
 
 Now Poetry, in its technical aspect, may be defined 
 as a device for communicating human experiences 
 that, owing to their super-utilitarian character, can 
 not be definitely expressed by the mere juxtaposition 
 of words in accordance with the mechanics of any 
 given tongue. Poetry, in its highest moments, is an 
 emotional approximation of the inexpressible ; a means 
 
 22 
 
whereby men may share with each other the ancient 
 but never old news of an immaterial world that inter- 
 penetrates and glorifies the world of sense. The es- 
 sence of prose is direct, factual statement. The 
 essence of Poetry is suggestion. In its characteristic 
 function, Poetry tells nothing; rather it induces the 
 mood of understanding by four principal means, which 
 are as follows : 
 
 1. By the use of symbols. 
 
 2. By rhythm, with or without rhyme. 
 
 3. By the studied manipulation of sound. 
 
 4. By appeal to memory. 
 
 I will give brief consideration to each of these in 
 order as stated. 
 
 First, the use of symbols. You have all noted in 
 reading poetry of the higher order that commonplace 
 words are frequently used in a special sense for which 
 no authority can be found in any dictionary. If you 
 will strike any note on a piano, and place your ear 
 close to the strings, you will hear a higher, thinner 
 note growing out of the one you struck a haunting 
 ghost of a sound. That overtone may be likened to 
 the sublimated meaning of a symbolic word. As an 
 illustration, let us consider the words "rose" and 
 "lily," both of which have been used so often in this 
 heightened sense that they have become haokneyed. 1 
 Fancy that in your reading you come upon the fol- 
 lowing- line : 
 
 "The roses and riots of passion, the lilies and 
 languors of sin. ' ' 
 
 1 See Woodberry >s essay, ' l The Language of All the World. ' 9 
 
 23 
 
We will suppose that you are an extremely factual 
 minded person, and that your consciousness has not 
 yet been expanded to include universal race experience. 
 Being such a person, you are naturally a bit puzzled 
 at this apparently unwarranted association of such 
 words as "rose" and "passion/' "lily" and "sin." 
 However, you are conscientious, as factual minded 
 people are likely to be, and so you consult the dic- 
 tionary. You turn to "rose," and you find the fol- 
 lowing: "A shrub of the genus Rosa, or its flower, 
 found wild in numerous species and cultivated from 
 remote antiquity." This definition in no way lessens 
 your difficulty; and you read on down the column, 
 learning much about many kinds of roses; but at the 
 end, the poet's use of the word is quite asi puzzling 
 as ever. You extend your curiosity to the word 
 "lily" with a similar result. Evidently the lexi- 
 cographer has withheld something of importance 
 about these words ! And what is it that he has with- 
 held? Nothing less than the distilled essence of uni- 
 versal human experience in the twin mysteries of love 
 and death; and that experience can not be handed 
 to you by any lexicographer, however exhaustive his 
 definitions may be. 
 
 But if, on the other hand, you are one who has 
 lived spiritually with the great ones of this world, 
 and through them have made the race consciousness 
 your own, you will not turn to the dictionary upon 
 reading that seductive line. You will pause a mo- 
 ment to ponder ; and in that moment something won- 
 derful will happen to you; for a multitude of race 
 
 24 
 
memories, more or less vague perhaps, but none the 
 less compelling, will flash across your mind. The sub- 
 limated joy and grief of unnumbered lovers will grip 
 you in that moment, and you will be enriched with 
 the age-old cleansing regret for many who were very 
 dear and are dead. For those two little words, by 
 long association, have become symbols of two great 
 dominating mysteries of life. 
 
 There is a line of William Morris that combines the 
 rose with another symbol of universal human signi- 
 ficance, the moon. It has always had a powerful ef- 
 fect upon me though it is extremely simple. It runs 
 as follows: 
 
 ' ' Two red roses across the moon. ' ' 
 
 Now I believe that I am not a whit more sentimental 
 in temperament than the most matter-of-fact individ- 
 ual before me. On, the contrary, my closest friends 
 say that I am anything but a sentimentalist. I live 
 close to the ground, and it is my habit to insist upon 
 the importance of the sense of common things. But 
 whenever that line occurs to me, I have a moment of 
 enchantment. Roses and the moon! Whoever has 
 been young will be sure to get something of a thrill 
 from that combination of words a thrill in no way 
 to be explained by floriculture on the one hand and 
 astronomy on the other ! But he who has been young 
 with the youth of all the world shall have the better 
 understanding and the greater thrill. 
 
 I do not wish to leave the impression that I am 
 particularly interested in the symbols of erotic exper- 
 
 25 
 
ience. I have chosen these examples merely because 
 they are hackneyed, and therefore obvious. One 
 might go on for days analyzing symbols of equal 
 power, relating to every phase of human experience. 
 There are thousands of such words that have been 
 charged with the joys and sorrows of the race by a 
 hundred generations of song. Each is like a little 
 door opened suddenly upon long vistas of life ; and 
 he who looks through them shall be glorified by the 
 consciousness of his close kinship with all men in all 
 times. And in every case it will be found that we are 
 indebted to the sorcery of the poets for these en- 
 chanted words. One can not know any language well 
 unless he become familiar with its verbal overtones; 
 and, therefore, to neglect the study of Poetry is 
 equivalent to limiting the range of communicable 
 states of consciousness and to make impossible a full 
 realization of the very purpose of language. 
 
 The second in our list of devices through which 
 Poetry functions as the economy of expression, is 
 rhythm. Everyone must have noted that, whether 
 we are concerned with forms in time or forms in 
 space, symmetry is the prime requisite of survival. 
 Symmetry may be defined roughly as the balance of 
 all parts with reference to the center of the whole. 
 In accordance with some inscrutable law, all things, 
 in the universal struggle to survive, display a tend- 
 ency to become round. The circle is undoubtedly the 
 absolute. A regularly curved line, returning upon 
 itself, is the circle in space; periodicity is the circle 
 in time. The former is manifest in the representative 
 
 26 
 
arts and in the objective world generally; the latter 
 is dominant in the arts of music and poetry and in 
 the subjective realm. That which is not symmetrical 
 is not thoroughly efficient and cannot endure. In ac- 
 cordance with cosmic law, a tentative form must 
 approximate roundness or it ceases to exist as a thing 
 in itself and becomes a part of some symmetrical 
 scheme that absorbs it. This idea may be extended 
 into all fields. It is true in mechanics, morals, state- 
 craft, art. You cannot overwork the conception. The 
 creative force of the universe seems to move most 
 efficiently in a curve that tends towards a "perfect 
 return" upon itself. We have been hearing a great 
 deal about "free form verse" of late years; but there 
 can be no such thing as free form in the sense intended. 
 Form can not be conceived as free, simply because it is 
 not essentially arbitrary, but is determined in accor- 
 dance with inexorable law the same that determines 
 the course of the sun, the roundness of the celestial 
 bodies, the beating of the heart, the ebb and flow of 
 the tide. It was not through whim or chance that 
 poets first chanted in rhythm. Ehythm in poetry is 
 not an artificial device, but a natural phenomenon. 
 It is no less than the artistic manifestation of power's 
 tendency to return upon itself, to make cycles. 
 
 All power is rhythmic. All effective machinery 
 acts in rhythm. An engine is losing power the mo- 
 ment it ceases to act rhythmically. At that moment 
 when human utterance reaches the height of expres- 
 siveness, it begins to swing into measure. An Indian 
 squaw in the grip of a great passion sways her body 
 
 27 
 
back and forth, and her voice becomes rhythmic. The 
 efficiency of an army is increased by the drum-beat. 
 A large body of soldiers, marching over a long bridge, 
 must break into rout step, lest the structure be en- 
 dangered by rhythm. 
 
 Poetry is the economy of human expression. It 
 was first expressed rhythmically because in order to 
 achieve the utmost economy in order to be poetry 
 it was obliged to be symmetrical in the time sense, 
 just as great representative art must be rhythmic in 
 the space sense. 
 
 Khyme is not, of course, an essential; but, when 
 skilfully used, it is of very great value in the economy 
 of poetry ; for it serves to emphasize the law of period- 
 icity, and is a legitimate means of heightening poetic 
 effect. Perhaps its greatest value to the craftsman, 
 who by virtue of a long and patient apprenticeship 
 has become master of his tools, is to be found in the 
 increased difficulty of composition it entails. For it 
 forces the; poet to give the utmost attention to every 
 syllable in his line and compels him to examine every 
 possible synonym in the language that he may find the 
 one word exactly suited to the purpose of the moment. 
 I have often found occasion to compare the works of 
 various modern poets of high rank, with this idea in 
 mind ; and I have found that in poetical works of con- 
 siderable length, those that are unrhymed are more 
 often diffuse than those that are rhymed; that, as a 
 rule, more is actually told in a dozen rhymed lines 
 than in the same number of lines without rhyme. 
 
 It is the fashion of the moment among a certain 
 
 28 
 
class of would-be poets, seeking a short and easy trail 
 up the Parnassian steep, to speak of rhyme and defin- 
 ite rhythmic pattern as trammels. Doubtless both 
 are such to the unskilled, and quite properly so. But 
 to a craftsman who has spent, let us say, a quarter of 
 a century in struggling to master them, rhythmic pat- 
 tern and rhyme are the very sources of artistic free- 
 dom ; for genuine freedom can not exist except within 
 the confines of inescapable law. Doubtless the pacing 
 horse, when he first goes into training, is impatient 
 with his hobbles, feeling that he could travel better 
 if he were only allowed to gallop. But when he has 
 mastered the technique of pacing, his hobbles no long- 
 er hinder him. He finds himself freer and his effi- 
 ciency greater by virtue of his very limitations. So 
 it is with the skilled craftsman in verse. 
 
 But we have not yet touched upon the chief value 
 of rhythm in the dynamics of poetry. "We have noted 
 that it is the prime function of this subtler phase of 
 language to induce a mood of understanding rather 
 than to tell by direct factual statement. That is to 
 say, the characteristic appeal of poetry is to the sub- 
 conscious mind. Every student knows that at those 
 moments when the intellectual process is at its height, 
 the normal consciousness is subdued, the objective 
 world fades away, and the sense of time is lost. Un- 
 der such circumstances I have known an hour to pass 
 in what seemed to be an instant. Whenever the mind 
 works at its maximum intensity, this phenomenon is 
 likely to occur; and it is out of just such mental 
 states, apparently divorced from time and space, that 
 
 29 
 
all the beauty and wonder of the man-made world 
 have come. In considering the lapse of normal con- 
 sciousness during periods of intense concentration, 
 one comes very near to the definition of genius, which 
 F. W. H. Myers believed to be a predisposition to 
 subliminal uprushes. 
 
 Now since it is the function of poetry to release the 
 potentialities of the subconscious mind, it is apparent 
 that any device calculated to subdue* the normal con- 
 sciousness must be of extreme importance in the poetic 
 process ; and it is well known that rhythm has a pow- 
 erful hypnotic effect. All mothers in all times and 
 countries have instinctively understood this. 
 
 The third in our list of poetic devices is the manip- 
 ulation of sound. Often in well wrought poems it 
 will be noted that the rhythm, which is determined by 
 syllabic quantities in the classic tongues and by accent 
 in most modern languages, is not the only one. There 
 are subtler rhythms, not concerned with the rules of 
 scansion, and these proceed concurrently with the 
 primary rhythm somewhat after the manner of melo- 
 dies in counterpoint. One of these secondary rhythms 
 is realized by a skillful shifting of the caesura so as to 
 give, within the regular beat, a sense of steadily in- 
 creasing wave lengths of sound, culminating in a tonal 
 climax and falling back to begin anew. The effect 
 upon an ear made sensitive by long acquaintance 
 with poetry is like that of a nightwind about the eaves 
 or of the accumulating force of waves upon a beach. 
 It is probable that most readers of poetry, though 
 they may be more or less moved by this ghostly 
 
 30 
 
rhythm, are quite unconscious of the means employed 
 by the poet to produce the effect. Tennyson's blank 
 verse, especially in The Idylls, admirably illustrates 
 the value of this secondary rhythm ; while the rhymed 
 couplets of Dryden and Pope demonstrate the weari- 
 some monotony that inevitably results from the lack 
 of it. 
 
 There is still another minor rhythm which is de- 
 termined by the designed recurrence of vowel and 
 consonant sounds within the line. This is so subtle 
 that it hardly admits of discussion here, and is better 
 left to the sense of the individual reader, though it is 
 none the less real and none the less important because 
 of its subtlety. It is possible, however, to give direc- 
 tion to the curiosity of the student unfamiliar with 
 the subtleties of verse construction by stating that 
 Browning generally lacked the sense for this nice 
 adjustment of sound in varying tonal patterns, while 
 Swinburne had it in the highest degree, for which 
 reason, largely, his verse is the most musical and 
 seductive in our language. This studied arrangement 
 of vowels and consonants into what one might term 
 a sound mosaic is valuable not only for the ease with 
 which poetry so written may be voiced, but also be- 
 cause it furnishes a tonal background for those occa- 
 sional discords which the poet must use by way of 
 shocking the normal consciousness awake to some 
 momentary phase of ruder actuality in the subject 
 matter. This latter phase of poetic strategy proper- 
 ly falls under the head of onomatopoeia. 
 
 Almost any eighth grade pupil is able to give the 
 
 31 
 
stock example of onomatopoeia, which is Poe's 
 " Bells" an altogether wretched example, vying in 
 blatant obviousness with South ey's verbose disserta- 
 tion on the disorderly conduct of the waters at Lodore. 
 Perhaps my deep-seated dislike for the " Bells " may 
 be traced to a teacher of expression I once had ; for I 
 have not forgotten the burning sense of shame I ex- 
 perienced at those times when I was forced to take 
 the floor, labor at an imaginary bell rope and chortle 
 that inane combination of monotonous sounds amidst 
 gales of laughter from the class. I have called it a 
 wretched example of onomatopoeia for the reason that 
 the device, which may be of great service in the 
 economy of poetry when employed with subtlety and 
 for a definite purpose, is here used by Poe for the sake 
 of the sound merely, and does not serve to communi- 
 cate either an idea or a mood. Nothing of importance 
 is accomplished by contriving to combine in a metrical 
 composition a considerable number of words that hap- 
 pen to rhyme with "bell." In "Ulalume," however, 
 Poe was wonderfully successful in inducing a distinct 
 mood by means of appropriate sounds. 
 
 Some of the finest examples of onomatopoeia that I 
 know are to be found in the Greek poets, and the 
 most notable of these are, strangely enough, passed 
 without comment in all of the texts with which I am 
 acquainted. You who have read the Agamemnon of 
 J^schylus will recall the first speech of the "King of 
 Men" upon his return to his native Argos after the 
 fall of Ilium. He describes in a few swift phrases 
 the destruction of the Trojan city, and in his descrip- 
 
 32 
 
tion these lines occur. I will give them first in very 
 inadequate English : 
 
 "Rave Ruin's whirlwinds; and the ashes, dying with 
 
 them, 
 Belch forth fat blasts of wealth." 
 
 You will note that the poet is concerned for the mo- 
 ment with the puffing and spurting of the tongues of 
 flame from the ruins of a great conflagration. Now 
 observe the manner in which the greatest poet of them 
 all save only one has suited the sound to the 
 sense. In the original the words run thus : 
 
 "Spodos propempei pionas ploutou pnoas." 
 
 There is aline in the "CEdipus Tyrannus" of 
 Sophocles that is quite as remarkable for onomato- 
 poeic effect. It occurs in the Messenger's speech 
 descriptive of the suicide of Jocasta. Many of you 
 will remember that a portion of that speech is con- 
 cerned with incest, unwittingly committed by the 
 unhappy Queen. Gilbert Murray's version runs as 
 follows : 
 
 "But we heard 
 
 Her voice within, crying to him of old, 
 Her Laius long dead ; and things untold 
 Of the old kiss unf orgotten, that should bring 
 The lover's death and leave the loved a thing 
 Of horror, yea a field beneath the plow 
 For sire and son ; then wailing bitter low 
 Across the bed of deaths unreconciled, 
 Husband from husband born, and child from child ' ' 
 
 33 
 
It is the last line that is onomatopoeic in the original 
 a line concerned wjth a, mood of horror and 
 disgust. Now what sound in nature is more likely to 
 convey such a mood than the sound of a frog 's croak- 
 ing ? It is that which Sophocles used for the produc- 
 tion of the desired effect. And here is the line in 
 Greek : 
 
 "Ex andros andra kai tekn' 'ek teknon tekoi." 
 
 Another striking example from the ancient Greek 
 is to be found in one of the Sapphic fragments. It is 
 descriptive of the moaning of cool waters through an 
 apple orchard on a sleep day. Note the reiteration 
 of the moaning sound : 
 
 "Amphi de psuchron keladei di' usdon 
 Malinon aithussomenon de phullon 
 Koma katarei." 
 
 A similar example, producing the sound of wind, is 
 to be found in Book II, line 441, of the Georgics. 
 
 There are many good examples in English; as, for 
 instance, in that portion of Tennyson's "Passing of 
 Arthur, ' ' where Bedivere bears the dying king to the 
 barge. There one hears the clash of the knight's 
 harness and "the dint of armed heels" down "the last 
 hard footsteps of that iron crag. ' ' Perhaps the most 
 remarkable effect in the passage cited is the sudden 
 shifting from consonant to vowel sounds when Bedi- 
 vere first sees "the 1 level lake and the long glories of 
 the winter moon." 
 
 In a recent poem, descriptive of a prairie rain storm, 
 
 34 
 
we find the sound of distant thunder mumbling in the 
 sweltering hush, as follows: 
 
 "What mean yon cries where the flat world dies 
 In hazy rotundity 
 Tumult a-swoon, silence a-croon, 
 Lapped in profundity 
 Bane or boon or only the drone of a fever rune ? ' ' 
 
 But onomatopoeia is concerned not only with the 
 imitation of sound; it is also capable of intensifying 
 the hearer's sense of motion. In the fifth JEneid, 
 line 481, we find perhaps the most famous example of 
 the device employed to this end. The line to which 
 I refer describes the felling of an ox with a blow, and 
 by shortening the quantity of the proper syllable Ver- 
 gil succeeded in giving a vivid sense of the falling 
 weight. One of our modern poets has suggested the 
 hoof beats of galloping horses in the movement of a 
 line, which runs thus: 
 
 "The might of the Mede, the hate of the Hun, 
 the bleak North wind of the Goth." 
 
 I have often heard students of poetry speak of 
 "poetic ornament"; and doubtless many regard 
 onomatopoeia as chiefly ornamental. But it must be 
 understood that poetry is not fancy-work, primarily 
 designed to please. It is a mode of human utterance 
 existing for the sole purpose of communicating states 
 of consciousness beyond the power of factual statement 
 to express. Ornament for its own sake has no place 
 in poetry. Only those devices may be regarded as 
 
 35 
 
legitimate which serve to increase the hearer's re- 
 ceptivity. In the language of poetry adequacy 
 alone is beauty. I am aware that this statement 
 smacks of literary heresy; but a close examination of 
 its ultimate meaning will reveal its truth. 
 
 The fourth principal means in the economy of 
 poetry is the appeal to memory, and it is by far the 
 most important of them all, because it has to do with 
 the very subject-matter of the art. There are two 
 kinds of memory that of the individual and that of 
 the race. That poetry which appeals to the individual 
 solely through his recollection of his personal reac- 
 tions to the narrow environment of everyday life, is 
 minor poetry; while that which appeals to both the 
 individual memory and to that all-embracing race- 
 memory historical and literary tradition is major 
 poetry. It follows that the power which poetry will 
 exert upon a given individual will be in direct pro- 
 portion to his ability to respond to the memory ap- 
 peal. This explains the popular success of such poets 
 as Riley, and also the general neglect of the great 
 world-poets whom everyone will praise and few will 
 read. The average person is fairly rich in individual 
 memories, but poor in race memory thanks to an 
 educational system that emphasizes the so-called 
 "practical." 
 
 For the manner in which the memory appeal func- 
 tions in poetry, we have a close analogy in the wire- 
 less telegraph. When, for instance, the faint electric 
 thrill has traveled across the Atlantic, say from Ire- 
 land to Newfoundland, it is too weak to operate the 
 
 36 
 
recording instrument at the receiving station. For 
 this reason, in the early days of the wireless, a device 
 called "a coherer " was employed. It consisted of a 
 glass tube filled with iron filings. Through this the 
 faint electric thrill passed, and as it did so, caused 
 the filings to cohere, thus completing the circuit be- 
 tween the recording instrument and a powerful ground 
 battery. It was the ground battery that did the work. 
 In the dynamics of poetry, to apply the analogy, the 
 written or spoken word is the coherer that conducts 
 the poetic suggestion, and serves to hurl across the 
 mind of the hearer the latent, and often unsuspected, 
 power with which his soul is charged. It is the soul 
 of the recipient that must complete the work of won- 
 der; and thus precious messages are passed from 
 consciousness to consciousness across the "seas of mis- 
 understanding. ' ' 
 
 I have given a necessarily brief outline of the 
 dynamics of poetry ; but before I close it seems neces- 
 sary that I should give some consideration to the 
 poetry of our time. There is every reason for believ- 
 ing that we have entered upon one of the most notable 
 poetic periods since the Eevival of Learning reached 
 its supreme flowering in Elizabethan England. Most 
 of you here will remember how, a decade ago, poets 
 were generally regarded with suspicion if not with 
 actual hostility. We were nothing if not "practical," 
 and we were well convinced that the business of being 
 a poet was hardly a man-sized job. We were hustlers, 
 and we had no time for nonsense. Also, we had no 
 time to stop and ask ourselves just what all the 
 
 37 
 
hustle was about, and where we thought we were 
 going, and why we were in such mad haste to get 
 there, and what we intended to do when we reached 
 our destination. In order to explain the curious 
 obsession under which we then labored, it is necessary 
 to go back to the French Kevolution. 
 
 That great social upheaval was essentially a Bour- 
 geois revolt, and it resulted in the ascendancy of the 
 trading class throughout the Western World. The 
 actual status of the Proletariat was but little altered. 
 It was not the triumph of Democracy, as many still 
 think, but of Individualism, which is the direct op- 
 posite of Democracy; for Individualism places the 
 social emphasis upon the rights of the individual, 
 while Democracy, if it is ever to be realized, must 
 stress the duties of the individual that the rights of 
 the group and the individual may be conserved. The 
 former leads naturally to the conception of liberty as 
 license ; the latter, to the conception of liberty as law. 
 
 For awhile the new social order, based upon the 
 laissez faire theory of economics, worked well, for it 
 offered an enormous stimulus to personal initiative. 
 As a result, if we are to regard progress as chiefly 
 a material process, the world leaped forward farther 
 in four generations than it had crept in all the cen- 
 turies since the fall of the Eoman Empire. But very 
 soon it began to be evident, not only to the seers who 
 sit above the crowd, but even to the many who labored 
 much and had little time to think, that something 
 was fundamentally wrong with this new social order 
 in which the individual might freely seek his own 
 
 38 
 
selfish ends without regard for the general welfare 
 of society, so long as he paid his taxes and kept within 
 the bounds of certain statutes that were virtually x 
 little more than police regulations designed to keep 
 some semblance of order in the universal scramble 
 for the things of this world. Men began to see how 
 poverty increased among the many, how huge fortunes 
 accumulated with the few, and how the souls of men N 
 were being warped and stunted at both extremes of / 
 the social scale ; for too much is quite as deadly as too 
 little. Out of this state of affairs there grew up a 
 cynical philosophy of life, based upon a purely mate- 
 rial scale of values. With the doctrine of the Naza- 
 rene upon their lips, men acted upon the principle 
 that "he may take who has the power, and he may ^ 
 keep who can." 
 
 Nor were men to be condemned for espousing this 
 philosophy; for what we believe to be true is de- 
 termined almost wholly by the social atmosphere in 
 which we live. The individual conscience is only 
 rarely able to rise above the prevailing social con- 
 science of the time. 
 
 Panics, strikes, inter-class hatred these in every 
 nation of the Western World were the early and sin- 
 ister fruits of this philosophy of self-seeking. Had it 
 been possible to confine the operation of that mate- 
 rialistic view of life to the struggle between indi- 
 viduals, the pot of social discord might have sim- 
 mered on for generations. But it could not long re- 
 main so. Powerful predatory groups grew up in 
 every land and to a greater or less extent controlled 
 
 39 
 
the governments of the nations. Between these groups 
 a pitiless struggle for the domination of the economic 
 system of the world inevitably followed. Owing to 
 her geographic situation, her peculiar genius for or- 
 ganization and her highly developed technical skill, 
 quite as much as to her temperamental bias, Germany 
 first forced to its logical conclusion that impossible 
 philosophy of life ; and she became the outlaw of the 
 nations, the huge mad dog of the world. 
 
 Though many of us may not have known it at the 
 time, what we beheld in August, 1914, was a tremend- 
 ous demonstration of an ethical fallacy that, much as 
 we might feel disinclined to confess it, had come to be 
 almost universally accepted as true. It was the fal- 
 lacy involved in the statement that "he may take who 
 has the power, and he may keep who can." So long 
 as it remained in the realm of individual struggle for 
 the means of life, we could not all see it for the hideous 
 thing it always was. But when, greatly magnified, 
 it was suddenly projected upon the map of a con- 
 tinent as upon a vast canvas; when we saw its ulti- 
 mate meaning scrawled large in the smoke and flame 
 of countless homes ; heard it voiced in the hoarse roar 
 of looting millions, in the cries of dying thousands, 
 and in the wailing of whole peoples over their multitu- 
 dinous dead, then at last many of us began to under- 
 stand. What the slow, pitiless years of Man's in- 
 humanity to Man could not teach us, the great catas- 
 trophe taught. After all these centuries of lip ser- 
 vice we begin to see at last how he who taught that a 
 man must be his brother's keeper and that one must 
 
 40 
 
love one's neighbor as oneself, was no impractical 
 dreamer mouthing pretty sentiments for Sunday re- 
 petition, but an intensely practical thinker pronounc- 
 ing the fundamental law of all sane human relations. 
 
 It may seem to many of you, at this point, that I 
 have wandered far from my theme, but, as a matter 
 of fact, I have not left it for a moment ; for Poetry, 
 being a means of communication in the higher realms 
 of human consciousness, is a social phenomenon, and 
 its status and trend are socially determined. 
 
 My aim has been to give as briefly as possible the 
 etiology of that materialistic malady which had fas- 
 tened upon society before the war, and which had 
 resulted in a conspicuous general neglect of the higher 
 values. Now, while future historians will, no doubt, 
 point to August, 1914, as the division point between 
 the two world-conceptions of organization Individ- 
 ualism, with its materialistic bias, and Democracy, 
 with its distinct spritual emphasis yet no great 
 social change is ever so abruptly realized. The cap- 
 ture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 is gener- 
 ally given as the opening date of the Renaissance, 
 but the new spirit had been abroad in the world some 
 years before that event. Similarly, the reaction 
 against economic individualism and its corollary, ma- 
 terialism, had been felt long before the catastrophe 
 of an impossible social system appalled the world in 
 1914. The rapid growth of Socialism and Syndical- 
 ism were symptoms of that reaction. Science, that 
 had begun by denying whatever could not be weighed 
 and measured, had actually undertaken to prove by 
 
 41 
 
experiment the survival of the ego after the disso- 
 lution of the body, and had gone far in that direc- 
 tion. The world had become uneasy as a hive of 
 bees about to swarm ; and suddenly all over the world 
 poets sprang up literally by hundreds, and volumes 
 of poetry began to sell as only sensational novels had 
 sold before. This was one of the most profoundly 
 significant symptoms of the social change that was 
 rapidly preparing in the world. Once more men had 
 found materialism intolerable; once more the world 
 had come vaguely to realize the ancient truth that 
 Man can not live by bread alone. It was as though 
 a spiritual springtime had come upon a world grown 
 weary of a long winter. Everywhere there were 
 singing voices. Some few were the voices of night- 
 ingales ; most were the voices of mocking birds ; and 
 very many, it must be said, were no more than the 
 tuneless voices of crows. But when even crows at- 
 tempt to sing, then summer must indeed be on the 
 way! 
 
 Now while it can no longer be doubted that we have 
 entered upon a great poetic period, it can not yet be 
 said that the poetic consciousness of the time has 
 been wholly freed from the baneful influence of the 
 age that is passing; for, as I have remarked, the 
 status and trend of poetry are socially determined, 
 and society is still in the penumbral region of transi- 
 tion from Individualism to Democracy. Accordingly, 
 we have long been, and still are, confronted with the 
 phenomenon of impressionism in nearly every field of 
 intellectual and spiritual endeavor. 
 
 42 
 
At the risk of taking more time than has been al- 
 lotted to me, I must give some consideration to this 
 significant phase of the contemporary trend, for I 
 believe it is generally misinterpreted. 
 
 Impressionism has been defined as the tendency to 
 repudiate all standards of judgment (which are the 
 result of the accumulated experience of the race) 
 and to set up individual caprice as a guide. 1 It is 
 simply the intellectual and spiritual reflex of econom- 
 ic individualism. It is anarchy in the realm of mind, 
 just as the laissez faire theory of economics is anarchy 
 in the realm of matter. We find this spirit at work 
 in contemporary art, philosophy, poetry, criticism, 
 morals and religion. It has been misunderstood and 
 highly praised in the intuitional philosophy of \ 
 Bergson and in the insanities of the more blatant / 
 writers of free verse. Some six or seven years ago/ 
 an exhibition of Cubist and Futurist paintings was 
 held in various large cities of the country. Many 
 of us went to satisfy our curiosity and some of us 
 remained to laugh. But it was no laughing matter; 
 for out of those grotesque daubs already leered the 
 hideous spirit of disorganization that was even then 
 driving us on to an unthinkable catastrophe. The 
 same spirit was then, and is still, at work in the so- 
 called poetry of a dozen fantastic schools. 
 
 It has been the claim of these misguided enthus- 
 iasts and poseurs that they are writing democratic 
 
 i Irving Babbit. Modern French Masters of Criticism. 
 It seems to the writer that Prof. Babbitt, in common with 
 a great many others, confuses Individualism and Democracy. 
 
 43 
 
poetry; whereas, their product is so exclusively aris- 
 tocratic, as someone has aptly remarked, that in the 
 majority of cases no one but the authors can tell with 
 any degree of certainty just what it is the authors 
 are trying to communicate. Such so-called poetry 
 may be considered democratic only in the very special 
 sense that nearly everybody seems to be writing it; 
 nor is this a matter for marvel, for if each individ- 
 ual is to set up his own standards of judgment, a long 
 and faithful apprenticeship is no longer necessary, and 
 anyone may produce his own poetry for home con- 
 sumption. For my part, I am quite willing that this 
 should be done; with the proviso, however, that the 
 product shall be consumed at home ! 
 
 As a reaction against a barren formalism, the 
 "new" poetry, as it is called, will no doubt serve a 
 good purpose in the end; for experimentation is al- 
 ways necessary in a universe where rigidity is death. 
 But formlessness can not survive; and already the 
 inevitable reaction seems to be setting in. Thanks 
 to the abnormal pressure of war-conditions, we have 
 been driving in the general direction of Democracy 
 (though we are still very far from it) a form of 
 social organization never as yet realized upon this 
 planet. Contrary to the opinions of many, Democ- 
 racy connotes no free-and-easy mode of life, but in- 
 tensive organization, the universal reign of law in 
 the interest of the race as a whole. As we near the 
 realization of that supreme social concept, our whole 
 view of life and, consequently, of art, will be cor- 
 respondingly modified. We shall come to insist more 
 
 44 
 
and more upon experts in all things. Eespect for 
 standards, love of order, will return. The petty per- 
 sonalism, that has long dominated us, will die away. 
 Our poets will achieve the objective view of the world 
 of men and things and it is out of that view that 
 all great art, as all great life, must grow. 
 
 45 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 THE DIVINE ENCHANTMENT 
 
 A philosophical poem of about 1200 lines, dealing with 
 the birth of Jesus Christna. Written in 1897 and 1898. 
 New York: James T. White $ Co, 1900. Cloth, 46 pages. 
 The greater portion of the only edition of this book was 
 called in by the author and burned. 
 
 THE LONESOME TRAIL 
 
 Twenty short stories of the Early West. New York and 
 London: John Lane Company, 1907. Cloth, Frontispiece 
 by F. E. Schoonover, 30$ pages. 
 
 A BUNDLE OF MYRRH 
 
 A sequence of thirty-three lyrics. New York: The Out- 
 ing Publishing Company, 1907. Decorated boards. Cover 
 design and end sheets by Arthur M. Hosking, 61 pages. 
 Eeissued in 1911 by Mitchell Kennerley, New York. 
 
 MAN-SONG 
 
 Twenty-seven poems. New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 
 1909. Cloth. Cover design reproduced from a bas-relief 
 in clay, by Mona Neihardt, 124 pages. 
 
 THE RIVER AND I 
 
 An account of the author's descent of the Missouri River 
 from the head of navigation in an open boat. New York 
 and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1910. Cloth, 50 illus- 
 trations from photographs, 325 pages. 
 
 THE DAWN BUILDER 
 
 A prose romance of the Missouri River in early days. 
 New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1911. Cloth, 355 pages. 
 
 47 
 
THE STRANGER AT THE GATE 
 
 A lyric sequence celebrating the mystery of birth. New 
 York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1912. Cloth, 70 pages. 
 
 LIFE'S LURE 
 
 A story of the gold rush to the Black Hills, South Dakota, 
 in 1876. New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1914. Cloth, 
 277 pages. 
 
 THE SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Second piece in the American Epic Cycle. New York: 
 The Macmillan Company, 1915. Cloth, 126 pages. School 
 edition with annotations by Julius T. House issued in 
 1919, cloth, 181 pages. 
 
 THE QUEST 
 
 Complete collected lyrics. New York: The Macmillan 
 Company, 1916. Cloth, 181 pages. 
 
 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 
 
 First piece of the American Epic Cycle. New York: 
 The Macmillan Company, 1919. Boards, 126 pages. 
 Awarded the prize of $500 offered by the Poetry Society 
 of America for 1919. 
 
 THE SPLENDID WAYFARING 
 
 The story of the exploits and adventures of Jedediah 
 Smith and his comrades, the Ashley-Henry men, discov- 
 erers and explorers of the great Central Eoute from the 
 Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. Gives the historical 
 background of the Epic Cycle. New York : The Macmillan 
 Company, 1920. Cloth. Illustrations from contemporary 
 prints, manuscripts, etc., 290 pages. 
 
 Two MOTHERS 
 
 Two brief dramas in verse. New York: The Macmillan 
 Company, 1921. Cloth, 82 pages. 
 
 48 
 
THE POET'S PACK 
 
 A volume of one hundred poems by forty-six different 
 Bookfellows, edited by Mr. Neihardt and an advisory 
 committee consisting of Lily A. Long, Fanny Hodges 
 Newman and Clinton Scollard. Chicago: The Bookfellows, 
 1921. Boards. Frontispiece, 150 pages. 
 
 49 
 

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