STODDARD'S LAST POEM
more available for their brevity, but they also had the true lieder quality, the modern scarcity of which is now checking a custom of filling half-pages with the stanzas and sonnets at command. The poems, short and long, accepted from Stoddard by the Putnam editors appear to outnumber those of all the other contributors, and to hold their own in choice companionship. For it was in Putnam's that Longfellow's "Two Angels," "The Warden of the Cinque Ports," "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport," and that most haunting of his lyrics, "My Lost Youth," first appeared, not to mention three minor pieces. Bryant contributed his "Robert of Lincoln," and Lowell at least four characteristic poems; Bayard Taylor as many, equally good; Mrs. Stoddard, one of her earliest lyrics. I must not forget to mention the picturesque verse of Rose Terry, or the poems of a quaint singer, E. W. Ellsworth, which made us impatient of his reticence in after years. Aldrich probably was the youngest of all those who had the pleasure of seeing their measures on the fair pages of the Monthly; in his "Legend of Elsinore" can be found the dawning charm of his maturer genius and more fastidious art. Meanwhile a country boy, still under age, was surprised when certain stanzas entitled "Amavi," which he had mailed to Putnam's at a venture, were printed there in October, 1853, and was glad of the check earned by his first offer of a poem to any magazine. He still remembers just as vividly the delight given by Stoddard's lyrics, from the date of the appearance of a tiny avatar of the new mode—the little poem "At
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