A plodding pilgrim in the realm of rhyme,

A "star struck" singer of this sunny clime,

An humble private in poetic ranks,

Now craves your pleasure, and would hail your thanks. Grant him at least but room amid the throng

To pour the passion of his simple song;

And still believe though varied be his line

Sincerely and poetically-thine.

-The Author.

God is the Perfect Poet,

Who in creation acts his own conceptions.
-ROBERT BROWNING.

Truth guards the poet, sanctifies the line,
And makes immortal, verse as mean as mine.
-ALEX. POPE.

Poetry reveals to us the loveliness of nature; brings back the freshness of youthful feeling; revives the relish of simple pleasures; keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring-time of our being; refines youthful love; strengthens our interest in human nature by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings; and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life. -W. E. CHANNING.

A "poet" is a word soon said;

A book's a thing soon written. Nay, indeed,
The more the poet shall be questionable,
The more unquestionably comes his book!
-MRS. BROWNING.

Poets are the true seers. They discern the
truths which the science of after centuries
demonstrates.
-M. M. CASS, Jr.

Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong
And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song.

-KEATS.

There is a pleasure in poetic pains,

Which only poets know.

-COWPER.

DEDICATED

To The Memory of

MRS. FANNIE VIRGINIA MILLER.

A Noble and Self-sacrificing Daughter
of the Old Dominion;

In grateful recognition of the generous
encouragement received from her dis-
tinguished son,

POETRY.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling, sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression; so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object.

It is, as it were, the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe.

Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can color all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world. A word, a trait, in the representation of a scene or a passion will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past.

Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlineations of life, and, veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide-abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man. -SHELLEY.