Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Drift: A Sea-Shore Idyl: And Other Poems
In the summer of 1849 his parents removed from Illinois, and settled at Strawberry Farms, in the State of New Jersey. A Fourierite Pha lansterie had been established there but, at this time, it was gradually breaking up. Residing there during the next three years, seeing many social reformers, - some of them peculiarly ra tional, and some of them peculiarly eccentric, and hearing continually of social reform, the im pressible mind 'of the young poet took a philo Sophical bent, and began very early to speculate upon the difference between things as they areand things as they ought to be. This habit of thought continued with him to the end of his life. He was never a reformer, indeed, and for professional reformers he entertained a cordial contempt. His conviction appeared to be, - and it is, perhaps, as sound as any doctrine of con temporary social philosophy, - that the world is out of joint, and that no mere human power is available to set it right. With his philosophy, however, - or his lack of it, - the reader 13 not concerned; and I refer to his youthful acquaint ance with reformers and doctrines of reform, only to explain that bias toward speculation which appears in certain of his poems, - notably In wool-gathering, and that independent'men tal custom of viewing all subjects through the eyes of common sense, to which may be attrib uted the vigor and freshness Of much that he has written.
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