Harvard Poets.

University life fosters individual peculiarities. Any large centre of learning will gather about it both the learned and the unlearned, the ordinary and the peculiar. And almost every type of goodness, evil, and indifference will characterize the student life. Every university or college possesses proofs of this. But Harvard is, perhaps, at present unique in one particular, boasts a higher perfection in one field, enjoys deeper draughts of one pleasure than any other college in an American's knowledge. This is the work of Harvard poets. The work of our poets is the model of the western college poetasters and is therefore simply another example of our increasing greatness. As such, let us consider it for a moment. Of course we have differentiations of the poetic sense. We have the love ditty, the laboriously elaborated scholastic exercise, the philosophical sonnet, the frothy nothing, and the pessimistic snarl. A great portion of the writing is naturally the direct outcome of affectation, much of the rest from an ambition to shine as a literary light. But here and there at rare intervals we catch a glimmer, transient, it is true, of a pure, new thought, which will not be crowded out, and will in its utterance prove its own intrinsic worth. This, then, we may fairly accept as the basis of Harvard poetry. But what are the poets? Of course we have execrable rhymesters, writers who need not hope for immortality, but the grave. Although a Shelley, a Coleridge, or a Wordsworth may in his college days have penned despicable lines, we have no right to argue that one who here pens more despicable verse will be a greater than Wordsworth. A veil, never to be raised, hides the agony of authorship, more poignant than the sorrows of Werther, with which some poems, now hidden in the brains of their authors and the basket of the editor, have been forged. And yet it is from such a school that the poets of the future are to come.

Let us attempt a slight analysis of our poets and their work. First in favor is the amorous versifier. He sings in the abstract and therefore for all. His "Genevieve" is our "Genevieve;" in the beauty and grace of his love we see the ten-fold greater beauty and grace of our love. And so we applaud him to the echo and he walks before us with an added sense of his power and genius. And we steal his lines and post them as an offering to our love, no longer his. With pedantic pen and labored toil B. sings of the "Wail of the Whip-poor-Will," and if his lines help out the editor of the Bugle, and are printed, a fond mother weeps in joy over the promise of her son, and the Century registers a new contributor. C. is taking Phil. I. He breaks forth into an exegesis of Hedonism. The readers of the Bugle read and simply wonder. Perhaps it is all right, perhaps not. No one pauses to ask. It is not strange, however, if in future C's contributors are passed with suspicion. D. sings his little "Willow song," mounts his little pedestal, poses for a moment, and passes away. Such are our poets. They sing to us and we listen in pleased surprise, or transient pain.

Who then will say that Harvard poets are not different from other poets? They sing longer, louder, and better than the poets of other colleges. They say more, if they mean less, than other writers of their stamp. They mark distinctly a growing element in Harvard culture. Indigestion and good health are as clearly marked in Harvard verse as in the writings of a Lucy Larcom or a Carlyle. Poetry is one means open to us for the expression of our better thoughts. The verse in which we speak takes on a new significance, expresses a deeper power, as we grow older and better. Harvard poetry is a phase of Harvard thought, and the poets are the leaders of that thought. The variations of our poetry mark the transitions of our minds. If much is superficial, there yet remains a grain of sincerity, and in that grain is often found the germ of valuable work in after college life.