If Johnson and Goldsmith raised journalistic verse to the plane of poetry, so did Joseph Howe. Or, concretely, if Goldsmith’s _Deserted Village_ is authentic poetry, so is Howe’s _Acadia_. Consider this excerpt from Howe’s _Acadia_:— Pearl of the West!—since first my soul awoke And on my eyes thy sylvan beauties broke, Since the warm current of my youthful blood Flowed on, thy charms, of mountain, mead, and flood Have been to me most dear. Each winning grace E’en in my childish hours I loved to trace, And, as in boyhood, o’er thy hills I strode, Or on thy foaming billows proudly rode, At ev’ry varied scene my heart would thrill, For, storm or sunshine, ’twas my Country still, And now, in riper years, as I behold Each passing hour some fairer charm unfold, In ev’ry thought, in ev’ry wish I own, In ev’ry prayer I breathe to Heaven’s high throne, My Country’s welfare blends—and could my hand Bestow one floweret on my native land, Could I but light one Beacon fire, to guide The steps of those who yet may be her pride, Could I but wake one never dying strain Which Patriot hearts might echo back again, I’d ask no meed—no wreath of glory crave— If her approving smile my own Acadia gave! Are those lines any less true, human, sincere, winning poetry than the opening apostrophe of Goldsmith’s _Deserted Village_?— Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain; Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain, Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid, And parting Summer’s lingering blooms delayed: Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, How often have I loitered o’er thy green, Where humble happiness endeared each scene! How often have I paused on every charm. . . . and so on. ‘Pearl of the West!’—in just as short, apt, and felicitous poetic phrase as Goldsmith’s apostrophe ‘Sweet Auburn!’ Howe signalizes Nova Scotia, her natural beauty and magic, her ‘homeland’ thrall over the heart and imagination of her native sons, a thrall of mountain, mead, and wood, and flood, of kinship with nature and of pride in her resources on land and sea. His _Acadia_ is all authentic poetry.