Certain devoted American friends of poetry have been trying for some time to encourage poetry in this country; and I think they are on the right track when they go about it by way of encouraging _vers libre_. No other method could so swiftly and surely multiply the number of our verse-writers. For the new medium presents no difficulties to anyone; even the tired business-man will find himself tempted to record his evening woes in singless song. True, not everyone will be able at first trial to produce _vers libre_ of the quality that appears in the choruses of _Sampson Agonistes_: This, this is he; softly a while; Let us not break in upon him. O change beyond report, thought, or belief! See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused, With languished head unpropt, As one past hope, abandoned, And by himself given over, In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds O’er-worn and soiled. Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he, That heroic, that renowned, Irresistible Sampson? whom, unarmed, No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast, could withstand?... Which first shall I bewail, Thy bondage or lost sight, Prison within prison Inseparably dark? That is indeed admirable, and not so easy to write as it looks. But some kind of _vers libre_ can be turned out by anyone; and to encourage the use of this medium will be to encourage and vastly increase that multitudinous body of humble and industrious versifyers who are at present the most conspicuous ornament of American literature. The Decorative Straight-Jacket: Rhymed Verse MAXWELL BODENHEIM The clamping of the inevitable strait-jacket, rhymed verse, upon the shrinking form of poetry has been the pastime of centuries. Those who would free poetry from the outworn metal bands and let her stretch her cramped limbs are labeled decadent, slothful, and futile. How easy it is to paste disagreeable labels upon the things one happens to dislike. I admit that poetry freed from the bonds she has so long worn may become vulgar and over-demonstrative. A convict who has just been released from a penitentiary is perhaps inclined to caper down the road, and split the air with good red shouts. But after his first excesses he walks slowly, thinking of the way before him. With some poets free verse is still the boisterous convict; with others it is already the sober, determined individual. But I rather like even the laughing convict, looking back and flinging huge shouts at his imposing but petty prison.