POEMS By EDWARD ROWLAND SILL BOSTON AND NEW YORK Houghton, Mifflin and Company M DCCC LXXXIX 82270 Copyright, 1887, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. IN presenting this volume of poems to the public it is proper to state briefly the circumstances under which it has been gathered. A year or two ago the publishers, who had noted with interest the poems which Mr. Sill had been contributing to the Atlantic and other periodicals, both under his own name and under pseudonyms, invited him to make a collection of his recent poems for publication in a volume. He was in no haste to do this. He was doubtless conscious that his power was a growing one, as indeed the quick succession of poems indicated. At any rate he had that fine sense of poetic art which forbade him to be complacent over his own productions, i and he preferred to send fresh poems out, month by month, waiting for the day when a volume should be inevitable. In the midst of his mental activity, when he was acquiring great flexibility in the use of a variety of literary forms, he died. After his death, so freely, even carelessly, had he let his verses go, that month by month new poems under his familiar signatures appeared in the magazines, as if he went out of the sight of men, singing on his way. It seemed then only just to his memory, and due to literature, which he loved with a generous mind, that the present volume should be gathered. In making choice of its contents it has been thought best to take but five pieces from The Hermitage and other Poems, the only volume published by him, and containing his poetic work previous to 1868, the date of its appearance from the house of Leypoldt & Holt. When Mr. Sill bade good-by to his friends in Cali |