Bliss Perry, The American spirit in lierature: a chronicle of great interpreters

[255] delicious poignant moments where the spirit of life itself flutters like a wild creature, half-caught, halfescaping. It is for the beauty and thrill of these moments that the pages of Henry James will continue to be cherished by a few thousand readers scattered throughout the Republic to which he was ever an alien.

No poet of the new era has won the national recognition enjoyed by the veterans. It will be recalled that Bryant survived until 1878, Longfellow and Emerson until 1882, Lowell until 1891, Whittier and Whitman until 1892, and Holmes until 1894. Compared with these men the younger writers of verse seemed overmatched. The National Ode for the Centennial celebration in 1876 was intrusted to Bayard Taylor, a hearty person, author of capital books of travel, plentiful verse, and a skilful translation of Faust. But an adequate National Ode was not in him. Sidney Lanier, who was writing in that year his Psalm of the West and was soon to compose The Marshes of Glynn, had far more of the divine fire. He was a bookish Georgia youth who had served with the Confederate army, and afterward, with broken health and in dire poverty, gave his brief life to music and poetry. He had rich capacities for