Famous Single Poems
The resemblance to "A Visit from St. Nicholas" is very marked. To be sure, all anapæstic verse sounds much alike, but here there are the same tricks of expression, the same fondness for detail—in a word, the same style.
No doubt Mr. Livingston kept on writing such lively verse to the end of his life, since it seems to have been his favorite amusement, but none survives which is known to have been written later than 1789.
As to the internal evidence of the poem, it is pointed out that its setting fits admirably the old stone house at "Locust Grove," with its broad lawn and wide fireplaces, that Mr. Livingston always addressed his wife as "mama," and that she was in the habit of wearing a 'kerchief on her head at night; that he was born, reared and lived among villagers of Dutch descent, who retained many of the customs and traditions of their fathers, and that it "is manifestly more probable that the poem was composed by a country gentleman reared among Dutch surroundings, than by a Biblical scholar and linguist of the city."
On the other hand, Dr. Moore's poems are as different as possible from this light-hearted, airy and dashing rhyme. He frequently essays to be airy, it is true, and perhaps a third of the poems in his volume might fairly be called vers de société, but it is written laboriously with a
74
