SOURCE: An introduction in The Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moody, Volume I, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912, pp. vii-xlvi.

In the following essay, Manly offers a biographical and critical overview of Moody's career as a poet and dramatist.

Not merely because William Vaughn Moody was my colleague and my friend do I wish to speak of him, but because I feel that the poetry he left us is of unique and permanent value to us all, and believe that it was growing in depth, in sweetness, and in strength when the darkness descended so tragically upon him. The beauty of poetry as little needs the aid of argument as does that of a rose, and Moody's poetry is here to manifest its own loveliness and power; but the lover of beauty in a poem or in a rose may increase his delight by sharing it with another, and...