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JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
(Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.)

1876.
MR3

PUBLIC LIBRARY
981241A

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WQR 19 FEB'36

PREFACE.

THESE "Roadside Poems," originally planned as a collection of mountain poetry, have taken a course of their own in the compiler's hand, becoming thus what the title indicates.

The book begins and ends like the journey of a summer traveller, and may prove an agreeable companion to such as take it with them in their journeyings; for it lingers by brook and river, among mossy rocks and wayside blossoms, and under overhanging trees, and climbs and descends the hills of our own land, and the countries across the sea.

If it pauses long upon the mountain-sides, it is because there all travellers love to stay their feet, and refresh eyes and heart with a grander horizon. And its frequent returns to certain great poets may be allowed for a similar reason.

It has its occasional story or legend, and also

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its brief fragments of thought, -blossom or leaf plucked amid the great forests of poesy, and given by one wayfarer to another, as a souvenir of the pleasant places where they have loitered and dreamed together.

And it has, perhaps, something for stay-at-home travellers as well. A little book filled with sky and mountain glimpses, the sound of running waters and rustling trees, and wafts of fragrance from field and woodland, is scarcely out of place anywhere among poetry-lovers in the summertime.

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