If the reader has mistaken the above passage for free verse, let him re-read it and note the rime scheme.

An excellent recent poem in free verse of the Whitman type is "Come, Republic," by Edgar Lee Masters, of whom we shall have more to say in the chapter on the Contemporary Poets. The poem was published in 1916, before America entered the World War. For "the A. D. Bloods," see the Spoon River Anthology.

COME, REPUBLIC

Come! United States of America,

And you one hundred million souls, O Republic,
Throw out your chests, lift up your heads,

And walk with a soldier's stride.

Quit burning up for money alone.

Quit slouching and dawdling,

And dreaming and moralising.

Quit idling about the streets, like the boy
In the village, who pines for the city.

Root out the sinister secret societies,

And the clans that stick together for office,

And the good men who care nothing for liberty,

But would run you, O Republic, as a household is run.
It is time, Republic, to get some class,

It is time to harden your muscles,

And to clear your eyes in the cold water of Reality,

And to tighten your nerves.

It is time to think what Nature means,

And to consult Nature,

When your soul, as you call it, calls to you

To follow principle!

It is time to snuff out the A. D. Bloods.
It is time to lift yourself, O Republic,
From the street corners of Spoon River.

Do you wish to survive,

And to count in the years to come?

Then do what the plow-boys did in sixty-one,
Who left the fields for the camp,

And tightened their nerves and hardened their arms
Till the day they left the camp for the fields

The bravest, readiest, clearest-eyed
Straight-walking men in the world,

And symbolical of a Republic
That is worthy the name!

If you, Republic, had kept the faith
Of a culture all your own,

And a spiritual independence,

And a freedom large and new.

If you

had not set up a Federal judge in China,

And scrambled for place in the Orient,

And stolen the Philippine Islands,

And mixed in the business of Europe,

Three thousand miles of water east,
And seven thousand west

Had kept your hands untainted, free

For a culture all your own!

But while you were fumbling, and while you were dreaming

As the boy in the village dreams of the city

You were doing something worse:

You were imitating!

You came to the city and aped the swells,
And tried to enter their set!

You strained your Fate to their fate,

And borrowed the mood to live their life!
And here you are in the game, Republic,
But not prepared to play!

But you did it.

And the water east and water west

Are no longer your safeguard:

They are now your danger and difficulty!

And you must live the life you started to imitate
In spite of these perilous waters.

For they keep you now from being neutral-
For you are not neutral, Republic,

You only pretend to be.

You are not free, independent, brave,
You are shackled, cowardly

For what could happen to you overnight
In the Orient,

If you stood with your shoulders up,
And were Neutral!

Suppose you do it, Republic.

Get some class,

Throw out your chest, lift

Be a ruler in the world,

up your head,

And not a hermit in regimentals with a flint-lock.
Colossus with one foot in Europe,

And one in China,

Quit looking between your legs for the re-appearance
Of the star of Bethlehem-

Stand up and be a man!

Edgar Lee Masters (1869-)

Carl Sandburg's best known poem, "Chicago," is quoted in the following chapter. The poem which we quote here is a cutting satire upon a certain type of American millionaire.

A FENCE

Now the stone house on the lake front is finished and the workmen are beginning the fence.

The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that can stab the life out of any man who falls on them.

As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering children looking for a place to play.

Passing through the bars and over the steel points will go nothing except Death and the Rain and To-morrow.

Carl Sandburg (1878-)

On the part of the best contemporary writers of free verse, there is a tendency toward a greater regularity of form. It is felt that free verse is too easy to write and that its facility betrays the poet into diffuseness and feebleness. Hence the attempt to define free verse and to lay down certain laws for its composition. The Imagists define free verse as "a verse-form based upon cadence." One of the rules for the writing of poetry laid down by the Imagists is, in part: "To create new rhythms -as the expressions of new moods-and not to copy old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. In poetry, a new cadence means a new idea." The Imagists insist that the unit is not the foot or the line but the strophe, which may comprise the whole poem or only a part of it. Each strophe is conceived as a circle, a departure and a return. The following poem by John Gould Fletcher shows this tendency toward greater regularity of form.

EXIT

Thus would I have it:
So should it be for me,
The scene of my departure.
Cliffs ringed with scarlet,
And the sea pounding

The pale brown sand
Miles after miles;
And then, afar off,
White on the horizon,

One ship with sails full-set
Passing slowly and serenely,
Like a proud burst of music,
To fortunate islands.

John Gould Fletcher (1886-)

Free verse is a hybrid form; it is the result of an attempt to explore the no man's land which divides prose from verse. Of late years there has been much confusion of the arts. Music, poetry, and painting have all overstepped their traditional boundaries. Some of the later poets, not satisfied with free verse, have borrowed from the French a form called "polyphonic prose." This form, however, differs even less than free verse from what used to be called prose poetry or poetic prose. Mr. Patterson, in his excellent study, The Rhythm of Prose, states his conviction that the rhythm of free verse is not that of poetry but of prose "spaced prose,” he calls it. In other words, free verse is, in the main, only a new name for a very old thing, poetic or impassioned prose.

The bulk of current free verse is, like the great majority of rimed poems printed in our newspapers and magazines, not poetry at all; it is not even good prose. There are, however, poems in free verse which challenge comparison with anything that has been said or sung in rime. This anomalous form seems especially effective in poems which attempt to describe the complex industrial civilization of our time. Skyscrapers, railroads, and cot