CHAPTER II

PHILLIPS, WATSON, NOYES, HOUSMAN


Stephen Phillips--his immediate success--influence of
Stratford-on-Avon--his plays--a traditional poet--his
realism--William Watson--his unpromising start--his lament on
the coldness of the age toward poetry--his
Epigrams--_Wordsworth's Grave_--his eminence as a critic
in verse--his anti-imperialism--his Song of Hate--his Byronic
wit--his contempt for the "new" poetry--Alfred Noyes--both
literary and rhetorical--an orthodox poet--a singer--his
democracy--his childlike imagination--his
sea-poems--_Drake_--his optimism--his religious faith--A.
E. Housman--his paganism and pessimism--his modernity--his
originality--his lyrical power--war poems--Ludlow.

The genius of Stephen Phillips was immediately recognized by London
critics. When the thin volume, _Poems_, containing _Marpessa,
Christ in Hades_, and some lyrical pieces, appeared in 1897, it was
greeted by a loud chorus of approval, ceremoniously ratified by the
bestowal of the First Prize from the British Academy. Some of the more
distinguished among his admirers asserted that the nobility,
splendour, and beauty of his verse merited the adjective Miltonic. I
remember that we Americans thought that the English critics had lost
their heads, and we queried what they would say if we praised a new
poet in the United States in any such fashion. But that was before we
had seen the book; when we had once read it for ourselves, we felt no