Carolina.—­The concluding lines of this lyric have an imaginative vigor rare in American poetry.  Four stanzas are omitted.

Dirge for a Soldier.—­Boker’s Dirge was written in memory of General Philip Kearney.

Battle-hymn of the Republic.—­Written in December, 1861, while Mrs. Howe was on a visit to Washington.  Soon after the writer’s return to Boston the lines were accepted for publication in the Atlantic Monthly by James T. Fields, who suggested the title of the poem.  The song did not at first receive much notice, but before the Civil War was over had become very popular.

My Maryland.—­A poem of great strength and beauty, though of uneven merit.  It is unfortunately marred by a few rather intemperate expressions.  The sincerity of feeling is everywhere so evident, however, that these must be forgiven.  The lines were written by a native of Baltimore, Prof.  James Randall, and were first published in April, 1861.  The author of the famous song was teaching in a Louisiana college when he read in a New Orleans paper the news of the attack on the Massachusetts troops as they passed through Baltimore.  This newspaper account inspired the verses.

In the Hospital.—­This poem, which has enjoyed at best a newspaper immortality, deserves to be more widely known.  Its simplicity, directness, and truth of feeling are quite beyond praise.  According to a story which one dislikes to believe apocryphal, these lines were found under the pillow of a wounded soldier near Port Royal, South Carolina, in 1864.

Days.—­Regarded from the point of view of artistic form, perhaps nothing of Emerson’s is quite so flawless as “Days,” a poem which for conciseness and polish is worthy to be called classic.

A Death-bed.—­This is a worthy companion-piece to that other miniature classic, Thomas Hood’s song, beginning, “We watched her breathing through the night.”

Telling the Bees.—­“A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England.  On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning.  The ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home.”  This poem of Whittier’s is almost his highest achievement.  Lowell said, in writing of the Quaker poet (Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, VI.):  “Many of his poems (such for example as ’Telling the Bees’), in which description and sentiment mutually inspire each other, are as fine as any in the language.”  I often think, however, that Whittier will live longest by his hymns and poems of purely religious devotion.  I know of nothing similar in English that surpasses “The Eternal Goodness,” and perhaps half a dozen other poems.

Katie.—­About one-third of Timrod’s graceful poem which bears this title.  This is one of the few cases where I have ventured to make omissions.