CHAPTER 37
Contemporary Poets
There is no profession on earth which requires an attention so early, so long, or so unintermitting as that of poetry; . . . How difficult and delicate a task even the mere mechanism' of verse is may be conjectured from the failure of those who have attempted poetry late in life.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Oregon now has many poets, but, as has been pointed
out, it waited much longer than most lovely lands for
the coming of poetry.
The “most vile, thicke and stinking fogges” of Parson Fletcher are our literary heritage from Drake—better than poetry but not to be called by that name in an accurate summary. Not quite 200 years later Captain James Cook sighted the Oregon Coast. “Captain Cook’s discoveries,” said Dr. Andrew Kippis, “among other effects, have opened up new scenes for a poetical fancy to range in, and presented new images to the selection of genius and taste.” For instance, one of the scientific observers was given a most lovely welcome by the Polynesian chiefs, who “brought beautiful maidens to stand before him, disrobe, and, in this Evelike state, chastely to embrace him and retire”. Among those who wrote poetry in one way or another about Captain Cook were M. l'Abbe Lisle, Miss Hannah Moore, Miss Anna Seward, “a Mr. Fitzgerald of Gray's Inn”, and the gentle William Cowper. But the “new scenes” and “new images” did not include Oregon, which was poetically no better off after Cook than it had been after Drake.
Captain Barkley came along in 1787 with his 18-year-old wife. Mrs. Barkley wrote well enough in prose to keep a diary of the voyage, but she attempted no verse. Soon afterwards appeared John Meares. He
