a personality remarkable, at least, in some one aspect. Few are remarkable in many.

To the young reader: The thing to do is to read poetry for pleasure, not as a task. Look for exact epithet, unstereotyped expression. If you become curious about the work of some of these poets, good libraries are always available in which to find out more about them. Your own search and discovery of poems will form your taste better than any amount of theory about the writing of poetry. Your own temperamental bias will indicate the particular kind of poetry that is the best food for your spirit. As to writing it, "one pulse more of firm endeavor"-learn thoroughly from the past before you undertake what you may conceive to be the "poetry of the future." Great verse is a great craft. demanding the most intense and concentrated labour of all the faculties, whatever easy, airy spontaneity it may seem to possess in its final state. As to capturing the spirit that informs the greatest verse, there is no known prescription. Poetry rises to the surface from the wells of deepest emotion. And in some happy hour all the faculties contribute to the expression in perfect phrase of some truly significant emotion or thought. But the instrument of expression must be thoroughly mastered first against that lucky hour! Good hunting!

WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT

NEW YORK CITY,

August, 1922.

POEMS FOR YOUTH

POEMS FOR YOUTH

Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867)

Halleck was a descendant of John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians. He was born in Guilford, Connecticut, and came to New York City in 1811. He later retired to Guilford on a pension. He and his intimate friend Joseph Rodman Drake published anonymously in the New York Evening Post in 1819 the Croaker papers-a satire. Halleck's next poem, in the same year, was "Fanny," a travesty. "Marco Bozzaris" was printed by William Cullen Bryant in the New York Review in 1825. Halleck's first volume appeared in 1827 and his collected Poetical Writings in 1869.

You will find Thomas Campbell, the English poet, writing a quarter of a century before with the same oratorical gesture. "Marco Bozzaris" appeared the year after Byron's death, and Byron's influence had not waned. It undoubtedly affected in this poem one who was ordinarily a writer of the type considered "graceful" at the time. In "Marco Bozzaris" Halleck is much more than graceful, and through a certain amount of theatric rant sounds a strain of truly thrilling poetry. The diction is, of course, largely the diction of another day.

MARCO BOZZARIS *

AT midnight, in his guarded tent,

The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power:

In dreams, through camp and court, he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;

In dreams his song of triumph heard;

From The Poetical Writings of Fitz-Greene Halleck. Copyrighted and published by D. Appleton & Company, and reprinted with their permission.

Then wore his monarch's signet ring:
.Then pressed that monarch's throne-a king;
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
As Eden's garden bird.

At midnight, in the forest shades,
Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,

True as the steel of their tried blades,
Heroes in heart and hand.

There had the Persian's thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drunk their blood
On old Platea's day;

And now there breathed that haunted air
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arm to strike and soul to dare,
As quick, as far as they.

An hour passed on-the Turk awoke;
That bright dream was his last;
He woke to hear his sentries shriek,

"To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!"
He woke to die midst flame, and smoke,
And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,

And death-shots falling thick and fast As lightnings from the mountain-cloud; And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, Bozzaris cheer his band:

"Strike-till the last armed foe expires; Strike for your altars and your fires; Strike for the green graves of your sires; God-and your native land!"