THE GOLDEN LEAVES SERIES. I. GOLDEN LEAVES FROM THE BRITISH POETS. II. GOLDEN LEAVES FROM THE AMERICAN POETS. III. GOLDEN LEAVES FROM THE DRAMATIC POETS. IV. GOLDEN LEAVES FROM THE LATE ENGLISH POETS. IN UNIFORM VOLUMES. FROM THE AMERICAN POETS COLLECTED BY JOHN W. S. HOWS. NEW YORK: F. J. HUNTINGTON AND CO., PUBLISHERS. M DCCC LXVII. HARVARD Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, By JAMES G. GREGORY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. HIS Selection from the works of AMERICAN TH upon the same POETS is based upon the same design I contemplated in the companion volume of "GOLDEN LEAVES FROM THE BRITISH POETS," lately issued, I have endeavoured to gather into one portable vo1ume those Poems that have, by general acceptation, become identified in the hearts of the Peopie as the choicest and noblest specimens of American National Poetry. To these literal "household woras” there are added other selections, not perhaps so generally familiar to ordinary readers, but yet possessing sufficient merit to make them worthy a place in a work expressly intended as an exponent of the Poetic Genius of the Country. A few of the earliest recorded efforts of American poetic composition are given, as interesting relics of a bygone age-affording, as they do, graphic pictures of the habits and manners of the periods they describe; and as marking also the incipient dawnings of poetic talent in this country. |