THE EDITOR TO THE READER.

HE present enlarged edition of the "Library of Poetry and Song" has

THE

been projected with a view of making the collection more perfect, both in the choice of poems and the variety of sources from which they are derived. Within a very few years past several names of eminence have been added to the list of poets in our language, and every reader would expect to find samples of their verse in an anthology like this, to say nothing of the air of freshness which these would give.

That the demand for compilations of this character is genuine and very general is sufficiently demonstrated by the appearance, since the first edition of this was published, of Emerson's "Parnassus" and Whittier's "Songs of Three Centuries." These, however, do not seem to have supplanted Dana's "Household Book of Poetry," which still retains its popularity. It often happens that the same household contains several of these publications. The present volume, moreover, in addition to the fullness of its material, has been got up with much expense in the way of engraved illustrations, so that it will occupy a place by itself. Regarded from a literary point of view, it owes much to the expert hands of Mr. Knight and Mr. Raymond, who have assisted in its compilation and the perfecting of its details. The first edition has proved, commercially speaking, one of the most successful publications of the day; and if the compilation in its present shape should meet with the same favor, the Publishers, it seems to me, can ask no more.

When I saw that Mr. Emerson had omitted to include any of his own poems in the collection entitled "Parnassus," I doubted, for a while, whether

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I ought not to have practiced the same reserve.

Yet when I considered that

the omission on his part was so far a defect, and that there is not a reader of his volume who would not have been better pleased to possess several of his poems along with the others, I became better satisfied with what I had done, and allowed such of my poems as I had included to remain. In one respect, at least, the present compilation will have the advantage over Mr. Emerson's, namely, that it contains several of the poems with which he has enriched our literature.

JULY, 1876.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

The Poet

Thon who wouldst wear the name

Of Poet midst thy brethren of mankind, And clothe, in words of flame? Thoughts that shall live within the general und Deem not the framing of a deathless lay The pastime of a crowdy Summer day.

But gasher all thy Powers,

And wreak them on the verse that thou dost weave,
And, in thy lonely hours.

At Vilent morning or at wakeful eve,
While the team current lingles throughthy veins,
Set forth the burning wordd in fluxes & trans .

No smooth array of phrase,
Artfully sought and ordand though it be,
Which the cold rhymer layel-
Upon the page wrste langued industry,
Can wake the listless pulse to livelier-speed,
Or fill, with seedden teore, the eyes that read,

The secret wouldst thou know
To touch the heart or five the blood at will,
Let there eyes verflow

Let thy leps quever with the passionate thrill;
Seize the great thought ere yet its power be past,
And bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast.

Then, should thy verse appear Halting and harsh and all snaptly wrought, Fouch the crude line with fear,

Save in the moment of impassioned thoughts Then summon back the original glas and mend The train with Eapture that wrth five was penned

Yet let no empty gust

Of passion find an utterance in thy lay:

A blast that whirls the dust

Along the howling street and dies away;
Bur feelings of calm power and mighty Sweep,
Like currents
s journaying through the windless deep.