Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 55447-h.htm or 55447-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55447/55447-h/55447-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55447/55447-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/youngeramericanp00rittuoft Transcriber’s note: Text in italics is surrounded by underscores, _like this_. THE YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS [Illustration: Richard Hovey] THE YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS by JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE Illustrated with Portraits Boston Little, Brown, and Company 1904 Copyright, 1904, By Little, Brown, and Company. All rights reserved Published October, 1904 The University Press Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. To LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON WHO HAS ENRICHED AMERICAN LITERATURE WITH HER SONG, AND MY LIFE WITH HER FRIENDSHIP, THESE STUDIES OF THE YOUNGER POETS ARE INSCRIBED WITH THE WARM AFFECTION OF JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE FOREWORD TO attempt, in one volume, to cover the entire field of present-day poetry in America, will be recognized the more readily as impossible when one reflects that in Mr. Stedman’s American Anthology over five hundred poets are represented, of whom the greater number are still living and singing. One may scarcely hope, then, in the space of one volume, to include more than a representative group, even when confining his study to the work of the younger poets, for within this class would fall the larger contingent named above. It has therefore been necessary to follow a general, though not arbitrary, standard of chronology, of which the most feasible seemed that adopted by Mr. Archer in his admirable study of the English “Poets of the Younger Generation,”—the including only of such as have been born within the last half-century, and whose place is still in the making. The few remaining poets whose art has long since defined itself, such as Mr. Aldrich, Mr. Stedman, and Mrs. Moulton, need no further interpretation; nor does the long-acknowledged work of Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, nor that of James Whitcomb Riley, whose final criticism has been pronounced in every heart and at every hearth.