Broad were his shoulders, ample was his chest,
Compact his frame, his muscles of the best.
[Footnote: _A Portrait_.]

With the recent revival of interest in Whitman, the brawny bard has
again come into favor in certain quarters. Joyce Kilmer, as has been
noted, was his strongest advocate, inveighing against weakly
verse-writers,

A heavy handed blow, I think,
Would make your veins drip scented ink.
[Footnote: _To Certain Poets_.]

But the poet hero of the Harold Bell Wright type is receiving his share
of ridicule, as well as praise, at present. A farce, _Fame and the
Poet_, by Lord Dunsany, advertises the adulation by feminine readers
resulting from a poet's pose as a "man's man." And Ezra Pound, who began
his career as an exemplar of virility,[Footnote: See _The Revolt
against the Crepuscular Spirit in Modern Poetry_.] finds himself
unable to keep up the pose, and so resorts to the complaint,

We are compared to that sort of person,
Who wanders about announcing his sex
As if he had just discovered it.
[Footnote: _The Condolence_.]

The most sensible argument offered by the advocate of better health in
poets is made by the chronic invalid, Mrs. Browning. She causes Aurora
Leigh's cousin Romney to argue,