Penned in this age of chaos and change, fever and flourish, by a man born when Andrew Jackson was President, when Poe was an unknown youth with his second thin volume of verses in the press, when Coleridge, Moore, Crabbe, Southey, and Wordsworth were living bards, and when the memory of Byron, Shelley, Blake, and Keats was still recent; the present collection of poems is probably unique in its defiance of time and whim. Where else, indeed, would one be likely to find such a body of poetry; written almost wholly after the author’s eighty-fifth year, and with many of the choicest specimens dating from beyond his ninetieth year, yet exhibiting an uniform grace, vigour, and vividness which place it in competition with the best, irrespective of origin?

Our venerable author, Jonathan E. Hoag, was born February 10, 1831, in a farmhouse at Valley Falls, Rensselaer County, New York. Heredity gave him her best; for in his blood are mingled the Quaker strain of the Hoags, the sturdiness of the Wings, the rugged independence of Ethan Allen, and the high martial spirit of the Giffords, through whom he traces his descent from the Norman Walter Gifford, first Earl of Buckingham, who was standard-bearer to William the Conqueror. The earliest environment of Mr. Hoag, which he has celebrated in so many delightful poems and essays, was an idyllic kind of rural life which has today largely vanished through the incursions of the railway, telephone, and postal system; and which was marked by that lofty and picturesque simplicity formed when a race of fine stock and traditions reverts to the stalwart condition of the pioneer. In such a life there was, despite the proportion of arduous toil, a certain beauty and freshness that sprang from the continuous isolation with varied Nature, and from the acutely visible cycle of fundamental acts and processes—ploughing, sowing, cultivating, reaping, storing; stock-raising, shearing, spinning, weaving; baking, sewing, candle-making—all the simple, homely little deeds which modernity has banished from most individual lives through cooperative effort, yet which the most sophisticated writers like to recall in occasional idyls and delicately etched eclogues. Thousands knew this elder and vanished America, but being bound to the practical, did not feel its loveliness poignantly enough to need to express it in the rhythms and images of poetry. Mr. Hoag, however, was endowed with the true vision and divine sensitiveness of the bard; and vibrated sympathetically to the pastoral scenes around him. Alive to beauty in every form, he found it wherever he looked; and watched the calm agrestic years roll by, with the life of the old farm hoe, and the little school, and the academy, and the general training on the green. He knew, and what is more, he felt, the old America of our fathers; and was in addition a worshipper of those universal powers of grandeur and loveliness which gleam in the woods, hills, valleys, streams, and waterfalls of untenanted Nature. Add to this a keenly active, humorous, and analytical mind, and a disposition of the warmest kindness, tolerance, and sympathy; and you have a picture of the fundamentals on which our poet’s art is built.

The titanic background of the past, so pitifully lost to our younger generation, was possessed in all its potency by the growing bard. The Hoags are a long-lived race, and when little Jonathan was six he could sit at the feet of his great-aunt Lydia, who lived to be 103, and hear at first hand the reminiscences of one who had witnessed not only the Revolution, but the last of the French and Indian wars as well. He learned from the very first that essential continuity of life and thought which our moderns learn too late or not at all; and never swerved from conservatism and sanity as he grew to the six feet of sturdy Hoag, Wing, Allen, and Gifford brawn which he has today.

Of books Mr. Hoag was ever an avid reader. Though educated only at the “little red schoolhouse” and the Washington County Academy, he lost no opportunity to enlarge his liberal culture; so that ere long he was master of a wide erudition and discriminating philosophy. Uniting to his studiousness and acute observation of men and scenes, he gradually became stored within an accumulation of ideas and images which in one of his eloquent temperament could not but seek expression in literature. By degrees we find him uttering his thoughts and impressions in essays and poems; though moved somewhat to restraint because of the absence of early technical training in the most rigid literary forms. Of this earlier work very little verse has survived; though from the single specimen here presented we see that its natural merit was indeed great.

Mr. Hoag, maturing, acquired experience, family responsibilities, and varied interests. Poet and dreamer already, he became likewise skilled in law, newspaper correspondence, observant travel, and the several sciences. He developed social and political interests, visited the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876, and rose to a position of commanding influence in the Prohibition party; for his sensitive good taste had always rebelled against the bestial spectacle of drunkenness and its attendant miseries. His letters, signed “Scriba”, were always in demand by the press; whether touching on the beauties of some natural vista or historic spot, on some unusual observation pertaining to geology, geography, or meteorology, or on some problem of governmental or economic significance. In 1904, at an age already ripe, Mr. Hoag made an extended tour of the United States; beholding the scenic wonders of the West, and studying the condition of mankind all over the nation. He saw a sunset from Pike’s Peak, talked with old Geronimo, that last relic of aboriginal savagery, and accumulated a new fund of beauty and lore to animate his literary products. It is quite possible that the exceptionally powerful impression made on him by the awesome peaks and canyons that lay along his course was the basic impulse behind that renewed poetical flow which shines forth in these pages and which is still flourishing with undiminished lustre. The force of that impression can be attested by all readers of the Greenwich (N.Y.) Journal who followed “Scriba’s” series of graphic prose articles on the subject.

Late in 1915 Mr. Hoag received his final impulse toward continuous and systematic literary production through his advent to the miniature world of “amateur journalism”; a group of societies formed for the encouragement of the non-professional litterateur, and possessing an amateur press whose columns welcome all qualified comers. Availing himself of the various departments of criticism and encouragement, our bard began to turn out a finished product whose form fully sustained its matter, and which followed correctly those poetical traditions to which he was naturally inclined. The results may be seen in this volume; where the general classification, as shewn in the table of contents, exhibits the various directions taken by the author’s Muse. Much of this work is of nocturnal origin, inspired by dreams or waking visions of the darkness, and set to paper as quickly as possible. Scarcely anything is studied or premeditated, since “Scriba” sings for the most purely artistic of reasons—because he cannot help it! Awe, reminiscence, beauty-worship, sorrow, speculation, wonder—any of the countless impulses may move him; and when once moved, he cannot but express himself with that simple and spontaneously selective poignancy which is the truest art. And so he is today, at the age of ninety-two; expressing out of a long life of taste, thought, beauty, honour, and virtue, those images so thoroughly yet delicately coloured by the career they reflect. He resides at “Vista Buena”, his delightful village home in Greenwich, New York, where with his son and grandchildren he weaves his dreams, while Dionondawa’s cataract pours ceaseless music on his ears.

The poetry of Mr. Hoag is distinguished by a Doric purity and simplicity which, together with the reflective tranquillity and occasional domestic touches, affiliate it conclusively with the earlier American school. It is fresh, Colonial, and free from self-conscious ornamentation. It has escaped not only the abyss of modernism, but the hothouse of Victorian preciosity and affectation as well; keeping the ancient verbal austerity as Bryant kept it, and holding also not a little of that eighteenth-century ease and swing which, as in Dr. Holmes’ best work, is a genuine survival from our local tradition of Byles, Sewell, Freneau, Trumbull, Dwight, and Barlow,’ rather than a pedantic revival of Queen Anne and Georgian piquancy after the manner of the late Austin Dobson. Flexibility, however, is a dominant feature; and leads the poet to adapt his measure to his mood, so that we are occasionally surprised by such variations from the general style as we see in verses like “The Celtic’s Dream of His Erin Home”. Subtler variations are those which we note between essentially stately pieces, such as the Nature odes and pensive reminiscences; and the playful pieces, such as the juveniles and the jovial reminiscences. When in the lighter vein, Mr. Hoag manages with unusual success to avoid the insipid, the puerile, and the banal; and achieves a kind of simplicity with correct diction and images drawn directly from experience. This image-drawing occasionally attains a felicity amounting to sheer genius, for “Scriba” seems to know by instinct just what sort of unhackneyed allusion will best call up in a few words the vivid pictures his theme demands.

Should a critic attempt to decide which of the several fields of Mr. Hoag’s work best suits the author’s talents, he would find himself involved in much delicate comparison. There are odes to Nature’s primal forces which sometimes reach impressive depths, as where in speaking of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado he refers to black caverns where

“Vast nameless satyrs dance with noiseless feet,”

Then, too, there are elegies and poems of pathos and patriotism where sheer natural feeling seems to animate the lines with a radiance more lasting than that of studied phrases. The juvenile pieces are ineffably appealing, while the legends and brighter Nature poems are full of a quaint and characteristic fascination. But in the end it seems certain that a conscientious analyst would award the palm to those reminiscent idyls in which the writer’s own rural childhood is mirrored with such inspired fidelity and selective individuality. It is here that the descriptive and lyrical moods are most perfectly united, and here that the poet’s gift of original observation is given freest play. In these studies of Old America we have the convincing touch of one who has lived in the scenes he describes; and who consequently avoids the objectivity, inaccuracy, and false stresses of the newer bards whose outlook is purely detached and antiquarian. He knows what to tell, because he writes from living memories and does not need to rely on stock phrases, images, or situations. Who else, in describing the “little red schoolhouse”, would refer to the master’s tapping on the window to summon the scholars in from recess? Another poet would drag in the traditional bell—but “Scriba” knows his subject from actual experience. The spirit of childhood is very close to him, and he retains with a truly photographic accuracy his original reactions to the rural scene of the thirties; so that we may share the young enthusiasm with which he thrilled so many decades ago. Not a sentiment or perception is missing, and even the outworn, supposedly exploded values of the past take on a new reality as seen again through his unspoiled and ever-youthful eyes.

The present volume includes, besides one earlier piece, the entire output of Mr. Hoag’s finished Muse; that is, that portion of his contemporary work which has passed the scrutiny of his more calmly appraising second judgment, including all permanent material written between the winter of 1915–16 and the spring of 1923. What place it may ultimately take in the pastoral minstrelsy of America is not for the writer to predict; since the whole aesthetic order is at present so convulsed with unrest, rebellion, and a virtual transvaluation of values. But we may at least agree that according to accepted standards, our poet has accomplished a marvellous work in capturing the spirit of the buoyant, hopeful past for the benefit of the doubting, pessimistic present. What would we not give for that earlier outlook upon man, the world, and the universe! The esteem in which “Scriba” is held by his contemporaries may plainly be seen from the bulky appendix of tributes, in which the present writer appears as a persistent and periodical offender. It is that writer’s hope, both from personal regard and from a disinterested love of beauty in literature, that he may have the privilege of adding some day to these tributes a centennial ode which its venerable subject may read in the full vigour of a lengthened span.