Such work indicates not only a diversified circle of readers, who were not subject to the religious and political stress of earlier days, but it also shows a desire to be entertained, which would have been promptly discouraged in Puritan New England. We should not be surprised to find that the literature of this period was swayed by the new demands, that it was planned to entertain as well as to instruct, and that all the writers of this group, with the exception of Bryant, frequently placed the chief emphasis on the power to entertain. Fortunately instruction often accompanies entertainment, as the following lines from _The Croakers_ show:-- "The man who frets at worldly strife Grows sallow, sour, and thin; Give us the lad whose happy life Is one perpetual grin, He, Midas-like, turns all to gold." Drake's best poem, which is entirely his own work, is _The Culprit Fay_, written in 1816 when he was twenty-one years of age. This shows the influence of the English romantic school, and peoples the Hudson River with fairies. Before the appearance of this poem, nothing like these lines could have been found in American verse:-- "The winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid; And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katydid; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings And earth and sky in her glances glow." Although _The Culprit Fay_ shows the influence of Coleridge's _Christabel_, yet this American poem could not have been written by an English poet. Drake did not sing the praises of the English lark and the nightingale; but chose instead an American bird, the whippoorwill, and a native insect, the katydid, and in writing of them showed the enjoyment of a true poet. Drake's best known poem, _The American Flag_, which was signed "Croaker & Co.," because Halleck wrote the last four lines, is a good specimen of rhetorical verse, but lacks the poetic feeling of _The Culprit Fay_. Fitz-Greene Halleck's best known poem is _Marco Bozzaris_ (1827), an elegy on the death of a Grecian leader, killed in 1823. America's sympathies went out to Greece in her struggles for independence against the Turks. In celebrating the heroic death of Bozzaris, Halleck chose a subject that was naturally fitted to appeal to all whose liberties were threatened. This poem has been honored with a place in almost all American anthologies. Middle-aged people can still remember the frequency with which the poem was declaimed. At one time these lines were perhaps as often heard as any in American verse:-- "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!"