Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/157

STODDARD'S POEMS The King's Bell—the most extended and beautiful of his narrative productions—was issued by itself, and at once found a lasting place in the admiration of select lovers of poetry. On the whole, it seems to us that Mr. Stoddard has been somewhat careless of fame, as indeed a poet living in New York is apt to be. In provincial cities, where there is little enough to see, desire grows upon us to be seen and known of all men; but in the metropolis, where one can see so much and be himself so easily lost from public sight, a philosophic artist soon realizes that his own greater or less renown is of little moment compared with the storm and progress of the life about him. Once impressed with this feeling, his solicitude for appreciation is merged in love for art itself, unless, forsooth, he be stimulated by some publisher akin to that bearded husband of the ballet dancer in Hyperion who says: "I shall run her six nights at Munich, and then take her on to Vienna." For a poet of true sensibility never can run himself, even with a stage name plagiarized from a "grizzly" and a stage pair of seven-league top-boots.

The Songs of Summer, to which we have alluded, was Stoddard's second contribution, in book-form, to our metrical literature, and was composed of songs and idyls written after he had outgrown the undue influence of his early models (albeit these were of the best), and his genius had developed its specific quality. In fact, quality breathed from every leaf of that book, and at this day there is no single volume of American poetry to which, as a whole, we recur more [143]