due allowances are made for their limitations in education, training and general culture.  The limitations of Horton were greater than those of either of the others; he was born a slave in North Carolina in 1797, and as a young man began to compose poetry without being able to write it down.  Later he received some instruction from professors of the University of North Carolina, at which institution he was employed as a janitor.  He published a volume of poems, “The Hope of Liberty,” in 1829.

Mrs. Harper, Bell and Whitman would stand out if only for the reason that each of them attempted sustained work.  Mrs. Harper published her first volume of poems in 1854, but later she published “Moses, a Story of the Nile,” a poem which ran to 52 closely printed pages.  Bell in 1864 published a poem of 28 pages in celebration of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.  In 1870 he published a poem of 32 pages in celebration of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution.  Whitman published his first volume of poems, a book of 253 pages, in 1877; but in 1884 he published “The Rape of Florida,” an epic poem written in four cantos and done in the Spenserian stanza, and which ran to 97 closely printed pages.  The poetry of both Mrs. Harper and of Whitman had a large degree of popularity; one of Mrs. Harper’s books went through more than twenty editions.

Of these four poets, it is Whitman who reveals not only the greatest imagination but also the more skilful workmanship.  His lyric power at its best may be judged from the following stanza from the “Rape of Florida”: 

   “’Come now, my love, the moon is on the lake;
    Upon the waters is my light canoe;
    Come with me, love, and gladsome oars shall make
    A music on the parting wave for you. 
    Come o’er the waters deep and dark and blue;
    Come where the lilies in the marge have sprung,
    Come with me, love, for Oh, my love is true!’
    This is the song that on the lake was sung,
    The boatman sang it when his heart was young.”

Some idea of Whitman’s capacity for dramatic narration may be gained from the following lines taken from “Not a Man, and Yet a Man,” a poem of even greater length than “The Rape of Florida”: 

   “A flash of steely lightning from his hand,
    Strikes down the groaning leader of the band;
    Divides his startled comrades, and again
    Descending, leaves fair Dora’s captors slain. 
    Her, seizing then within a strong embrace,
    Out in the dark he wheels his flying pace;

    He speaks not, but with stalwart tenderness
    Her swelling bosom firm to his doth press;
    Springs like a stag that flees the eager hound,
    And like a whirlwind rustles o’er the ground. 
    Her locks swim in dishevelled wildness o’er
    His shoulders, streaming to his waist and more;
    While on and on, strong as a rolling flood,
    His sweeping footsteps part the silent wood.”