THE
WORLD'S
BEST POETRY

IN TEN VOLUMES, ILLUSTRATED

VOLUME III

SORROW AND CONSOLATION

AN
INTERPRETER OF
LIFE

By
LYMAN ABBOTT

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Photogravure from photograph by Hanstaingl, after portrait by Kramer.

THE
WORLD'S
BEST POETRY


IN TEN VOLUMES, ILLUSTRATED

Editor-in-Chief

BLISS CARMAN

Associate Editors

John Vance Cheney
Charles G.D. Roberts
Charles F. Richardson
Francis H. Stoddard

Managing Editor

John R. Howard

J.D. Morris and Company
Philadelphia
COPYRIGHT, 1904, by
J.D. Morris & Company

NOTICE OF COPYRIGHTS

I.

American poems in this volume within the legal protection of copyright are used by the courteous permission of the owners,—either the publishers named in the following list or the authors or their representatives in the subsequent one,—who reserve all their rights. So far as practicable, permission has been secured also for poems out of copyright.

Publishers of THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY.

1904.

Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., New York.—W.C. Bryant: "Blessed are They that Mourn," "The Conqueror's Grave," "Thanatopsis."

Messrs. E.P. Dutton & Co., New York.—Mary W. Howland: "Rest."

The Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York.—John W. Palmer: "For Charlie's Sake."

Messrs. Harper & Brothers, New York.—Will Carleton: "Over the Hill to the Poor House."

Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston.—Margaret Deland: "Love and Death;" John Hay: "A Woman's Love;" O.W. Holmes: "The Last Leaf," "The Voiceless;" Mary Clemmer A. Hudson: "Something Beyond;" H.W. Longfellow: "Death of Minnehaha," "Footsteps of Angels," "God's Acre," "The Rainy Day," "The Reaper and the Flowers," "Resignation;" J.R. Lowell: "Auf Wiedersehen," "First Snow Fall," "Palinode;" Harriet W. Preston: "Fidelity in Doubt;" Margaret E. Sangster: "Are the Children at Home?" E.R. Sill: "A Morning Thought;" Harriet E. Spofford: "The Nun and Harp;" Harriet B. Stowe: "Lines to the Memory of Annie." "Only a Year;" J.T. Trowbridge: "Dorothy in the Garret;" J.G. Whittier: "To Her Absent Sailor," "Angel of Patience," "Maud Muller."

Mr. John Lane, New York.—R. Le Gallienne: "Song," "What of the Darkness?"

Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.—J.W. Chadwick: "The Two Waitings;" Helen Hunt Jackson: "Habeas Corpus."

The Lothrop Publishing Company, Boston.—Paul H. Hayne: "In Harbor."

Messrs. G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York.—Elaine Goodale Eastman: "Ashes of Roses;" R.C. Rogers: "The Shadow Rose."

Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.—R. Bridges (Droch): "The Unillumined Verge;" Mary Mapes Dodge: "The Two Mysteries;" Julia C.R. Dorr: "Hush" (Afterglow).

II.

American poems in this volume by the authors whose names are given below are the copyrighted property of the authors, or of their representatives named in parenthesis, and may not be reprinted without their permission, which for the present work has been courteously granted.

Publishers of THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY.

1904.

W.R. Alger; Mrs. Amelia E. Barr; Henry A. Blood (Mrs. R.E. Whitman); Robert J. Burdette; John Burroughs; Mary A. De Vere; Nathan H. Dole; William C. Gannett; Dr. Silas W. Mitchell; Mrs. Sarah M. Piatt; Walt Whitman (H. Traubel, Literary Executor).

AN INTERPRETER OF LIFE.

BY LYMAN ABBOTT.

Poetry, music, and painting are three correlated arts, connected not merely by an accidental classification, but by their intrinsic nature. For they all possess the same essential function, namely, to interpret the uninterpretable, to reveal the undiscoverable, to express the inexpressible. They all attempt, in different forms and through different languages, to translate the invisible and eternal into sensuous forms, and through sensuous forms to produce in other souls experiences akin to those in the soul of the translator, be he poet, musician, or painter. That they are three correlated arts, attempting, each in its own way and by