PREFACE.
All the poems of mine that I care to retain are collected in this fourth edition, and are now reproduced as I wish them to stand. Some of them should not be here, perhaps; but they have been copied and recited often and are beyond recall.
In the third edition (1895) thirteen poems, beginning with the verses "Delay," were added to what comprised the first and second editions (1885). In the present volume, the nine titles following "The Long Regret" are appended to the contents of the edition of 1895.
Lest the dominant meter might become monotonous, it was varied in parts of "Karagwe," of "The City of Decay," and in a few other instances.
For knowledge of the fact on which is founded the ballad "A Man-of-War Hawk," I am indebted to chapter vi. of the "Memoirs of General William T. Sherman."
