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If Johnson and Goldsmith raised journalistic verse to the plane of poetry, so did Joseph Howe. Or, concretely, if Goldsmith’s Deserted Village is authentic poetry, so is Howe’s Acadia. Consider this excerpt from Howe’s Acadia:—

Pearl of the West!—since first my soul awoke

And on my eyes thy sylvan beauties broke,

Since the warm current of my youthful blood

Flowed on, thy charms, of mountain, mead, and flood

Have been to me most dear. Each winning grace

E’en in my childish hours I loved to trace,

And, as in boyhood, o’er thy hills I strode,

Or on thy foaming billows proudly rode,

At ev’ry varied scene my heart would thrill,

For, storm or sunshine, ’twas my Country still,

And now, in riper years, as I behold

Each passing hour some fairer charm unfold,

In ev’ry thought, in ev’ry wish I own,

In ev’ry prayer I breathe to Heaven’s high throne,

My Country’s welfare blends—and could my hand

Bestow one floweret on my native land,

Could I but light one Beacon fire, to guide

The steps of those who yet may be her pride,