CHAPTER XI
CHARLES WHARTON STORK, GEORGE STERLING, LOUIS
UNTERMEYER, JOHN GOULD FLETCHER, JOHN
HALL WHEELOCK
Charles Wharton Stork
Like some great morality play written in lines of clear poetic beauty, is Charles Wharton Stork’s "Sea and Bay," which he chooses to call a poem of New England. This limitation, however, is wrong, for it might more properly be called The Journey of Every Youth as it is the story of Man's spiritual development—his restlessness in the bay—the home; his longing for the sea—the world and then its climactic fusion of sea and bay.
So that at last within me bay and sea,
My peaceful boyhood and my stormy prime,
Unite their warring natures and are one.
This narrative poem is the best of Mr. Stork's poetic works, superior to "The Queen of Orplede," or "Day Dreams of Greece," or even that original imaginative poem, "Flying Fish: an Ode."
The central character of "Sea and Bay" is Alden Carr, who describes his youth:
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