Always artistic, Tabb’s verse usually suggests workmanship; it is more thoughtful than spontaneous.  His religious poetry presents, in the main, a rather striking similarity to the work of George Herbert.

The Battle-field.—­Miss Dickinson has much of the witchcraft and subtlety of William Blake.  Many verses of the shy recluse, whom Mr. Higginson so happily has introduced to the world, are not only daring and unconventional, but recklessly defiant of form.  But, as her editor has well said, “When a thought takes one’s breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence.”  Emily Dickinson had more than a message, more than the charm of unexpectedness, more than the gift of phrase,—­she had (and of how many Americans can this be said?) an intense imagination.

Fertility.—­This selection appears in the collected poems of Maurice Thompson (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1892), under the title of “A Prelude.”

Sesostris.—­Of this poem Mr. Stoddard has the high praise that in imaginative quality it is unequalled in nineteenth century literature, unless by Leigh Hunt’s sonnet on the Nile.  The same critic does not scruple to declare of Mr. Mifflin that he has a “glorious imagination,” and to prophesy for him a distinguished future.  Seldom indeed has a first book of verse won such instant and universal appreciation as Mr. Mifflin’s volume of sonnets, just issued as the “American Treasury” goes to press.

INDEX TO FIRST LINES.

A blight, a gloom, I know not what; 242

All that thou art not, makes not up the sum; 267

All the long August afternoon; 223

A man said unto his angel; 211

Another lamb, O Lamb of God, behold; 266

Around the rocky headlands, far and near; 271

As a fond mother, when the day is o’er; 63

As a twig trembles, which a bird; 145

At midnight, in the month of June; 57

At sea are tossing ships; 149

At the king’s gate the subtle noon; 183

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down; 76

Be thou a bird, my soul, and mount and soar; 282

Because I could not stop for Death; 264

Bedtime’s come fu’ little boys; 225

Behind him lay the gray Azores; 199

Beneath the warrior’s helm, behold; 248

Birds are singing round my window; 193

Burly, dozing bumble-bee; 169

By the rude bridge that arched the flood; 74

Chaos, of old, was God’s dominion; 256

Close his eyes; his work is done; 106

Dark as the clouds of even; 100

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days; 126

Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way; 175