hought_ is at present exhausted, stagnant, and imitative. It is cursed
with mannerism, even as the Chinese are cursed, and every honest man of
mind knows it. In such a state of national art it is cheerful to open a
volume like these poems, in which one hears, as it were, the first
lark-notes of an early dawn and sees from afar a few gleams of morning
red. It is not the full light nor the great poetry which reforms and
awakes nations, but it is the forerunner in many things of such, and
will be read with great pleasure by those who long for some faint
realization of the great Nature-Art of the future.

EDITOR'S TABLE

It is evident enough that all questions between North and South must
settle themselves, should the war only _go far enough_. When it comes to
the struggle for life; to the last most desperate effort on either side
for political and personal existence, then people will begin to open
their eyes to the fact that the one who conquers must conquer
effectually, and hold the vanquished at utter will. Very few among us
have as yet realized this extreme case as the nations of the Old World
have done a thousand times. We who lived at home, have, looking at the
late wars of Europe, imagined that 'the army' might beat or be beaten,
but that 'the country' and the mass of its in-dwellers would remain
unharmed. We have not seen cities captured, farms laid waste, and
experienced the horrors of war. When it comes to that, the case becomes
desperate, and nothing is left at last but unconditional victory or
defeat. Had we done so, we should have 'gone to extremes.'

The South has begun the war, dared its terrors, encountered them, and
become desperate. It is win or lose with them. We too, with every loss
gather fresh strength. Ere long we shall probably have every man in the
Federal Union capable of bearing arms summoned to the field, and that
less by Executive command than by an individual sense of duty, _or
dread_. Our people have learned very slowly indeed what disasters may
befall them in case of defeat, but they are gradually coming to the
knowledge, and are displaying a rapidly advancing energy of interest and
of action. They have immediate and terrible disasters from hostile
armies to repel, and they have to apprehend in the future such a picture
of ruin and disorganization as the result of secession as no one can
bear to contemplate. We are coming to it, and may as well make up our
minds at once to the fact