the spheres,
Her children of imperial birth
Are all the golden years.

"The happy orb sweeps on,
Led by some vague unrest,
Some mystic hint of joys unborn
Springing within her breast."

What takes one in "The Gates of Silence," which, of course, means the
gates of death, are the large, sweeping views. The poet strides
through time and space like a Colossus and

"flings
Out of his spendthrift hands
The whirling worlds like pebbles,
The meshed stars like sands."

Loveman's stanzas have not the flexibility and freedom of those of
Moody and McCarthy, but they bring in full measure the largeness of
thought which a true poem requires.

Some of Moody's poems rank with the best in the literature of his time.
He was deeply moved by the part we played in the Spanish-American War.
It was a war of shame and plunder from the point of view of many of the
noblest and most patriotic men of the country. We freed Cuba from the
Spanish yoke and left her free; but we seized the Philippines and
subdued the native population by killing a vast number of them--more
than half of them, some say. Commercial exploitation inspired our
policy. How eloquently Senator Hoar of Massachusetts inveighed against
our course! We promised the Filipinos their freedom--a promise we have
not yet fulfilled.

Moody's most notable poems are "Gloucester Moors," "An Ode in Time of
Hesitation" (inspired by the Shaw Monument in Boston, the work of
Saint-Gaudens), "The Brute," "The Daguerreotype," and "On a Soldier
Fallen in the Philippines." In this last poem throb and surge the
mingled emotions of pride and shame which the best minds in the
country felt at the time--shame at our mercenary course, and pride in
the fine behavior of our soldiers. It is true we made some pretense of
indemnifying Spain by paying her twenty million dollars, which was
much like the course of a boy who throws another boy down and
forcibly takes his jack-knife from him, then gives him a few coppers
to salve his wounds. I remember giving Moody's poem to Charles Eliot
Norton (one of those who opposed the war), shortly after it appeared.
He read it aloud with marked emotion. Let me quote two of its stanzas:

"Toll! Let the great bells toll
Till the clashing air is dim.
Did we wrong this parted soul?
We will make it up to him.
Toll! Let him never guess