This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II WHEN in 1916 theMacmillan Company published his collected lyrics, Neihardt had become so conscious that the poems constituted a sequence and were directed to a special purpose that he determined to call the volume "The Quest." This title is an assertion that the arrangement of the poems is not accidental; that they are directed to the production of one great mood, the feeling of a search for the meaning of life. In a sense the volume is, as one of its critics has said, "an epic of the individual soul." The sense of search may be found in the first poem, "Lines in Late March." The youth, as he had done in boyhood, is whistling, but for the first time he is self-conscious concerning his expression of joy in mere physical existence. "I whistle. Why not?" No boy ever asks why he whistles or goes barefooted in the spring. It is youth, with its yearning, that asks that question. Then in the next poem we have the first wonder that comes with the consciousness of power over woman. Here is a new mystery. The youth is amazed, overwhelmed by the discovery. He is a "witless musician," she his violin. How complex, how delicate, how divine this human violin! How exalted the musician whose power is first realized! And yet I only feel that song which I have awak-ened mysteriously. Here we have what we always find in Neihardt, a feeling for that which is beyond analysis, the elusive, that part of life that flows all around us and through and beyond, ever escaping the effort to grasp and hold it. Masters of language are those who most feel its inadequacy to express the deepest emotions. Sometimes they find the new word, but even then full expression is not attained. Emotion ever runs beyond the limits of words. I would I knew some slow soft...

Excerpt from John G. Neihardt: Man and Poet Back of all large human achievement lies a philosophy of life, a feeling, however chaotic, for life-values. The early nineteenth century was dominated by the philosophical conceptions of Rousseau. Nature was deified and an eternal harmony alleged between man's instincts and his happiness. All the structure of society was, therefore, so much limitation upon human well being. Freedom was the watchword and freedom was, as Mill said, removal of obstacles. The fiscal policy of England was dominated by this strange obsession growing out of a natural rebellion against the repressive policies that had prevailed. Freedom of trade, of contract, of thought, of literary expression, war against restraint, ex cept what men found in vague laws of nature. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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