Excerpt from Songs of American Destiny: A Vision of New Hellas

For ten years, the maker of these Songs of American Destiny has experimented more or less incessantly with rhythm and rhyme. It has been his desire not merely to acquaint himself practically with the known technique of English verse, but if possible to increase its extant resources.

The Blank Verse of Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and Tennyson has wondrous possibilities - but for lyric work seemed unpromising. Every rhyme system on the other hand was necessarily to some extent mechanical - a preexisting form the molten poesy must fill. That rhythm may vary with mood, betray its ebb, announce its flow, its sudden turn of tide - make calms felt and storms - he had cause to believe from theory, and Heine's North Sea poems, certain scenes of Faust, and pieces by Matthew Arnold like "The Future" verified the theory.

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