SOURCE: Waggoner, Hyall Howe. “Archibald MacLeish and the Aspect of Eternity.” College English 4, no. 7 (April 1943): 402-12.

In the following essay, Waggoner explores the role of scientific thought in MacLeish's poetic representation of infinity and eternity.

Since the time of Edward Taylor the chief philosophical problem for American poets has been the resolution of their beliefs in relation to the ever swelling current of positivistic naturalism. Responding to the insistent need of man to see himself and his life sub specie aeternitatis, our poets, from Bryant to MacLeish, have sought over and over to fit their intuitions into systems often too narrow or too vague to endure.

But the inadequacy of their metaphysics to make intelligible all the facets of experience and to satisfy all the demands of intuition has not removed the need for a system that would clarify the life of man as seen both in time...