Author talk:Allen Eastman Cross
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ALLEN EASTMAN CROSS was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, December 30, 1864. He graduated from the Manchester high school with honors in 1881, and from Phillips Academy in 1882. He enterd Amherst College in 1882. The attention of his friends and college mates was first attracted to him, as a young poet of promise, by the appearance in the Boston Journal (July 25, 1885), of a poem entitled "Mt McGregor," on the death of Grant. Devoting much of his senior year to the course in English literature, his style was developed into one of considerable beauty and power. The publication, in the Amherst Literary Monthly and current magazines, of occasional poems and sonnets on the Madonna faces of certain of the old masters, led to his unanimous election as class poet. A part of his class poem "The Amherst Hills" was afterward published in the New England Magazine.
After graduating at Amherst in 1886, Mr. Cross continued his studies in Andover. His poems exhibit a spontaneity in the subjects chosen as well as in their treatment. Back of all the mere expression of the thought and sentiment, there is in all his poetry a depth of purpose, a sincere enthusiasm, an earnest vitality, and a deep spirituality, which will do much to overcome any present crudities of expression and carelessness of rhythm.—George F. Kengott, The Magazine of Poetry[1], vol. 1, 1889