r the last stanza might not have been omitted with advantage both
to the unity and force of the poem.

_The Last Leaf._--This masterpiece of mingled humor and pathos was a
favorite poem of Abraham Lincoln.

_The Old Kentucky Home._--The sincere and tender sentiment of this
song, no less than its popular melody, has made it for many years a
favorite. Even better known is Foster's "Old Folks at Home," which is
said to have had a larger sale than any other American song.

_Carolina._--The concluding lines of this lyric have an imaginative
vigor rare in American poetry. Four stanzas are omitted.

_Dirge for a Soldier._--Boker's Dirge was written in memory of General
Philip Kearney.

_Battle-hymn of the Republic._--Written in December, 1861, while Mrs.
Howe was on a visit to Washington. Soon after the writer's return to
Boston the lines were accepted for publication in the _Atlantic Monthly_
by James T. Fields, who suggested the title of the poem. The song did
not at first receive much notice, but before the Civil War was over had
become very popular.

_My Maryland._--A poem of great strength and beauty, though of uneven
merit. It is unfortunately marred by a few rather intemperate
expressions. The sincerity of feeling is everywhere so evident, however,
that these must be forgiven. The lines were written by a native of
Baltimore, Prof. James Randall, and were first published in April, 1861.
The author of the famous song was teaching in a Louisiana college when
he read in a New Orleans paper the news of the attack on the
Massachusetts troops as they passed through Baltimore. This newspaper
account inspired the verses.

_In the Hospital._--This poem, which has enjoyed at best a newspaper
immortality, deserves to be more widely known. Its simplicity,
directness, and truth of feeling are quite beyond praise. According to a
story which one dislikes to believe apocryphal, these lines were found
under the pillow of a wounded soldier near Port Royal, South Carolina,
in 1864.

_Days._--Regarded from the point of view of artistic form, perhaps
nothing of Emerson's is quite so flawless as "Days," a poem which for
conciseness and polish is worthy to be called classic.

_A Death-bed._--This is a worthy companion-piece to that other miniature
classic, Thomas Hood's song, beginning, "We watched her breathing
through the night."

_Telling the Bees._--"A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country,
formerly prevailed in the