John Hall Wheelock was born at Far Rockaway, Long Island, in 1886. He was graduated from Harvard, receiving his B.A. in 1908, and finished his studies at the Universities of GÖttingen and Berlin, 1908-10.

Wheelock’s first book is, in many respects, his best. The Human Fantasy (1911) sings with the voice of youth—a youth which is vibrantly, even vociferously, in love with existence. Rhapsodic and obviously influenced by Whitman and Henley, these lines beat bravely; a singing buoyance arrests one upon opening the volume. A headlong ecstasy rises from pages whose refrain is “Splendid it is to live and glorious to die.” The Beloved Adventure (1912) is less powerful but scarcely less passionate. Lyric after lyric moves one by its athletic music and spiritual intensity.

Wheelock’s subsequent volumes are less individualized. Love and Liberation (1913) and Dust and Light (1919) are long dilutions of the earlier strain. The music is still here, but most of the magic has gone. Wheelock has allowed himself to be exploited by his own fluency, and the result is unbelievably monotonous. Yet even vast stretches of two hundred and thirty unvaried love songs cannot bury a dozen or more vivid poems which lie, half-concealed, in a waste of verbiage.

In spite of his lapses and lack of selective taste, Wheelock is often a stirring lyricist. The Human Fantasy is one of the most remarkable “first” books of the period.