Then as a
poet he reached his climax in "The Daughter of Mendoza"--a
graceful but moonshiny imitation of Tom Moore and Lord Byron.
Perhaps it is better for the weak to imitate than to try to be
original.
It would not take one more than an hour to read aloud all the
poetry of the Southwest that could stand rereading. At the top
of all I should place Fay Yauger's "Planter's Charm,"
published in a volume of the same title. With it belongs "The
Hired Man on Horseback," by Eugene Manlove Rhodes, a long poem
of passionate fidelity to his own decent kind of men, with
power to ennoble the reader, and with the form necessary to
all beautiful composition. This is the sole and solitary piece
of poetry to be found in all the myriads of rhymes classed as
"cowboy poetry." I'd want Stanley Vestal's "Fandango," in a
volume of the same title. Margaret Bell Houston's "Song from
the Traffic," which takes one to the feathered mesquites and
the bluebonnets, might come next. Begging pardon of the
perpetually palpitating New Mexico lyricists, I would skip
most of them, except for bits of Mary Austin, Witter Bynner,
Haniel Long, and maybe somebody I don't know, and go to George
Sterling's "Father Coyote"--in California.
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