Whatever may be thought of the appropriateness of the term "Advance of English Poetry" for my survey of the modern field as a whole, there is no doubt that it applies fittingly to Ireland. The last twenty-five years have seen an awakening of poetic activity in that island unlike anything known there before; and Dublin has become one of the literary centres of the world. When a new movement produces three men of genius, and a long list of poets of distinction, it should be recognized with respect for its achievement, and with faith in its future. CHAPTER VII AMERICAN VETERANS AND FORERUNNERS American Poetry in the eighteen-nineties--William Vaughn Moody--his early death a serious loss to literature--George Santayana--a master of the sonnet--Robert Underwood Johnson--his moral idealism--Richard Burton--his healthy optimism--his growth--Edwin Markham and his famous poem--Ella Wheeler Wilcox--her additions to our language--Edmund Vance Cooke--Edith M. Thomas--Henry van Dyke--George E. Woodberry--his spiritual and ethereal quality--William Dudley Foulke--translator of Petrarch--the late H. K. Vielé--his whimsicality--Cale Young Rice--his prolific production--his versatility--Josephine P. Peabody--_Sursum Corda_--her child poems--Edwin Arlington Robinson--a forerunner of the modern advance--his manliness and common sense--intellectual qualities. To compel public recognition by a fresh volume of poems is becoming increasingly difficult. The country fields and the city streets are full of singing birds; and after a few more springs have awakened the earth, it may become as impossible to distinguish the note of a new imagist as the note of an individual robin. When the publishers advertise the initial appearance of a poet, we simply say _Another!_ The versifiers and their friends who study them through a magnifying glass may ultimately force us to classify the songsters into wild poets, gamy poets, barnyard poets, poets that hunt and are hunted. But in the last decade of the last century, poets other than migratory, poets who were winter residents, were sufficiently uncommon. Indeed the courage required to call oneself a poet was considerable. Of the old leaders, Whitman, Whittier, and Holmes lived into the eighteen-nineties; and when, in 1894, the last leaf left the tree, we could not help wondering what the next Maytime would bring forth. Had William Vaughn Moody lived longer, it is probable that America would have had another major poet. He wrote verse to please himself, and plays in order that he might write more verse; but at the dawning of a great career, the veto of death ended both. As it is, much of his work will abide. Indiana has the honour of his birth. He was born at Spencer, on the eighth of July, 1869. He was graduated at Harvard, and after teaching there, he became a member of the English Department of the University of Chicago. He died at Colorado Springs, on the seventeenth of October, 1910.