Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/234

 XVIII

GUY WETMORE CARRYL

F Guy Carryl had belonged to an earlier generation, it may be conjectured that he would have become known chiefly as a poet. Such more certainly would have been the case if he had grown up in rural life, apart from the opportunities for general literary work that, as it were, came to him from the first. The lyrical bent was strong within him. This might almost be inferred from one little poem which he wrote, while still a lad, on the death of a child. It contains a tender conceit, expressed with the grace and feeling that have warranted its preservation in a collection of his maturer serious verse.

His early writings, grave or gay, were often in metrical form, but none of the self-conscious type that marks the callow dreamer. They were the bright improvisations of a young man who inherited, besides the poet's ear and voice, a sense of the mirthful, and the impulse to fashion whatever could lighten the heart of a child, or "that child's heart within the man's" which even the luckless still retain. The bulk of his diversified and abundant early work was of [220]