John Hall Wheelock
John Hall Wheelock was born at Far Rockaway, Long Island, in 1886. He was graduated from Harvard, receiving his B.A. in 1908, and finished his studies at the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin, 1908-10.
Wheelock’s first book is, in many respects, his best. The Human Fantasy (1911) sings with the voice of youth—a youth which is vibrantly, even vociferously, in love with existence. Rhapsodic and obviously influenced by Whitman and Henley, these lines beat bravely; a singing buoyance arrests one upon opening the volume. A headlong ecstasy rises from pages whose refrain is “Splendid it is to live and glorious to die.” The Beloved Adventure (1912) is less powerful but scarcely less passionate. Lyric after lyric moves one by its athletic music and spiritual intensity.
Wheelock’s subsequent volumes are less individualized. Love and Liberation (1913) and Dust and Light (1919) are long dilutions of the earlier strain. The music is still here, but most of the magic has gone. Wheelock has allowed himself to be exploited by his own fluency, and the result is unbelievably monotonous. Yet even vast stretches of two hundred and thirty unvaried love songs cannot bury a dozen or more vivid poems which lie, half-concealed, in a waste of verbiage.
In spite of his lapses and lack of selective taste, Wheelock is often a stirring lyricist. The Human Fantasy is one of the most remarkable “first” books of the period.
Sunday Evening in the Common
Look—on the topmost branches of the world
The blossoms of the myriad stars are thick;
Over the huddled rows of stone and brick,
A few, sad wisps of empty smoke are curled
Like ghosts, languid and sick.
One breathless moment now the city’s moaning
Fades, and the endless streets seem vague and dim;
There is no sound around the whole world’s rim,
Save in the distance a small band is droning
Some desolate old hymn.
Van Wyck, how often have we been together
When this same moment made all mysteries clear;
—The infinite stars that brood above us here,
And the gray city in the soft June weather,
So tawdry and so dear!
Beauty
The old, familiar Beauty,
Caressed by the world’s dead hands,
Beauty, so old and weary,
Beloved of a thousand lovers,
Worn with a thousand kisses,
Surprising—beneficent—holy—
Comes to us all in the end.
Love and Liberation
Lift your arms to the stars
And give an immortal shout;
Not all the veils of darkness
Can put your beauty out!
You are armed with love, with love,
Nor all the powers of Fate
Can touch you with a spear,
Nor all the hands of hate.
What of good and evil,
Hell and Heaven above—,
Trample them with love!
Ride over them with love!
Nirvana
Sleep on, I lie at heaven’s high oriels,
Over the stars that murmur as they go
Lighting your lattice-window far below;
And every star some of the glory spells
Whereof I know.
I have forgotten you long, long ago,
Like the sweet silver singing of thin bells
Vanished, or music fading faint and low.
Sleep on, I lie at heaven’s high oriels,
Who loved you so.