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and in both she appears as the indomitable Promethean spirit who in the end was to fulfil that plan which in the beginning she had endangered. There is no reference to any woman in any of his poems which is out of harmony with this dominating and progressive idea.

Again, the theory of evolution lies behind all he wrote, whether it has externally to do with ancient or modern times. It is developed most explicitly in the sardonic "Menagerie," but this statement is simply the basic thesis of the trilogy. It begins with a rejection of the findings associated with Darwin, that external causes are final determinants in evolution:

Survival of the fittest, adaptation,

And all their other evolution terms,
Seem to omit one small consideration,

which is no less than the existence of souls, "restless, plagued, impatient things, All dream and unaccountable desire." And these souls are all merged in the common soul of the universe, "great nature working out her plan" and working it out according not merely to relentless material laws, but "groping, testing, passing on" in a progress of creative evolution. Moody did not feel any pettifogging embarrassment in connection with the citation of anachronisms against the writer of such historical plays. Yet if one were looking for justification for the presence of this apparently ultra-modern doctrine in a poem of ancient times, he could assert its implicit presence in much of the Greek philosophy, and point to its enunciation in "The Masque" by the angel Raphael rather than by any mortal:

I think for me Heaven seemed not Heaven till then
When from our seats of peace we could behold
The strife of ripening suns and withering moons,
Marching of ice-floes, and the nameless wars

Of monster races laboring to be man.

He

Moody's poetry is, on the whole, emphatically not easy to read. was not interested to write simple lyrics or narratives. Very few of his poems have even an implied narrative thread. Only in the dramas, both prose and poetry, did he tell clear stories. "Until the Troubling of the Waters," which is an apparent story, is, in fact, a dramatic exposition of a state of mind, and narrates the events of an early morning, themselves of little direct moment, in order to lead up to a climax which is left untold. The occasional poems are not self-explanatory nor accompanied by footnote helps. One must know the tragic history of Robert Shaw, if he is fully to understand the "Ode Written in Time of Hesitation," and if he does not know quite clearly the chronicle of international diplomacy in 1900, he will be utterly bewildered by "The Quarry."

Again, Moody's work is far from easy to read because of the almost complete subordination of the external content to the internal, or subjective implications. In the briefer and apparently simpler lyrics, Moody frequently makes the emotion an end in itself. In poems like "On the River" and "The Bracelet of Grass" and "A Gray Day," the mood of grief is presented without explanation. The reader who must know why the sole spectator in the last of these, or the lovers in the former two, feel as they do, turns the page baffled; baffled not so much by the actual content

as by the unsatisfied desire for a story. Moody lays on him the obligation to supply his own story or to do without one. He must be on the alert, as in the reading of a play that has no stage directions.

This same alertness is indispensable if one is to catch the figurative and deeper meaning of poems which have also a seductively literal and superficial one. Few readers who would ever open to them would fail to grasp the significance of "The Fountain" or "Until the Troubling of the Waters"; but many have fallen into the error of thinking the "Road Hymn for the Start" was nothing more than an elevated song of vagabondia, and that "The Daguerreotype" was pure autobiography, and not also a record of the self-distrust felt by any poet whose reach has exceeded his grasp. Moreover, the use of metaphor, which demands either close attention or keen poetic receptivity, is not limited to whole poems /or extended passages. Moody's poetry, throughout its length and breadth, is far more than usually implicit and suggestive. Finally, with reference to the elusiveness of his work, his extremely resourceful diction includes many words (almost all of them nouns) that will lay low all but the most erudite who are unfortified by a dictionary. Those who will survive eidolon, hydromel, amphora and muezzin, will take thought of their mental stature in the face of shawm, shard, minim and chrysm, and will succumb to ægipan, stasimon, windelstræ, crud, draff, and blooth. Yet these words and their like never produce the effect of the wilful display for which there would be no excuse. They possess the twin virtues of nicety in meaning and fine adjustment to the melody of their contexts.

The poetic beauties of Moody's work are usually distinguished and often exquisite. His wide and intimate knowledge of world literature results in an opulence of style which was markedly free from imitativeness. Although his completed poems seem unrestrained and spontaneous, they reveal, upon close study, the utmost firmness of structure and scrupulousness of detail. This structural security is most evident in the shorter lyrics, in which it would be difficult to make even the slightest change without appreciably disturbing the balance. It is hardly less perceptible to the close student of the poetic dramas. Careful observation, for example, of the relationship between the two poems bearing the title, "The Death of Eve," will show how far from casual were his processes of composition. In versification he is equally successful in the use of close-knit shorter stanzaic forms, and in the freer measures of the odes. He is so far a master of his medium that he does with apparent ease what are really difficult feats of technique. The degree to which he makes the sound and swing of the lines conform to their content has already been suggested in a comment on his diction. Though he was possessed of so extraordinarily wide a vocabulary that at times the exact, and perhaps obvious, word for him is unusual if not unfamiliar to the average reader, yet in their context these challenge the challenger to carry an indictment against them. Far more frequent, however, are the passages in which Moody makes exquisite use of words within the ken of everyone, as in the fine shadings of the youthful flower of love,

whose petals dim were fears,

Awes, adorations, songs of ruth, hesitancies and tears.

Finally, there lies in the connotative quality of Moody's workmanship, to which reference has already been made, perhaps the richest source of his poetic power. He is figurative not only in language, but in his habits of mind. His physical eye sees the appearance of things as a child would, though he interprets them as a man may. . Thus

The haggard shapes of twilight trees

A dance of dust motes in the sliding sun

the ivory circle of the moon

are at once naïve and sophisticated, and each one contains the aptest of epithets. Although he is not at all what is usually meant by a nature-poet, he derives from natural objects in hundreds of passages the analogies which give body to his thought. Such as the following need no exposition:

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Moody's broad fame is yet to be achieved. Even since his death the world has been coming anew to listen to the voice of poetry as a living tongue. His own public was small, and it is now being slowly augmented by the growing zest for poetry inspired by both the older and the newer poets. Because of the deep significance of his philosophy, and the consummate beauty of his art, we may look forward with confidence to a final estimate that will put him among the greatest of American poets, and among the leading singers in the world choir of his day.

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