sonnet, "Thought."

_On a Bust of Dante._--Parsons, one of the best of American poets, is
one of the most neglected. Stedman is inclined to think "On a Bust of
Dante" the finest of American lyrics (see "The Nature of Poetry," 254).

_The Port of Skips._--In a recent review of American Literature in the
London _Athaeneum_ occurs this sentence: "In point of power, workmanship,
and feeling, among all poems written by Americans, we are inclined to
give first place to the 'Port of Ships,' of Joaquin Miller."

_Evening Song._--No poem of Lanier is more free from his characteristic
faults. One regrets that so much of his work, highly imaginative as it
is, is marred by over-elaboration and artificiality.

_A Woman's Thought._--The striking reality and directness of this lyric,
its immense emotional undercurrent, and its abrupt, almost gasping
metre, admirably suited to the impassioned mood of the speaker,--these
are a few of the qualities that combine to make "A Woman's Thought" one
of the most remarkable poems in the book.

_The White Jessamine._--One of the most charming of Father Tabb's
lyrics. The verse of this poet is uneven in merit. He is too prone to
merely fanciful conceits. But at his best Tabb is imaginative, as, for
example, in the lines where he says of Angelo that he--

"From the sterile womb of stone,
Raised children unto God."

Always artistic, Tabb's verse usually suggests workmanship; it is more
thoughtful than spontaneous. His religious poetry presents, in the main,
a rather striking similarity to the work of George Herbert.

_The Battle-field._--Miss Dickinson has much of the witchcraft and
subtlety of William Blake. Many verses of the shy recluse, whom Mr.
Higginson so happily has introduced to the world, are not only daring
and unconventional, but recklessly defiant of form. But, as her editor
has well said, "When a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on
grammar seems an impertinence." Emily Dickinson had more than a message,
more than the charm of unexpectedness, more than the gift of
phrase,--she had (and of how many Americans can this be said?) an
intense imagination.

_Fertility._--This selection appears in the collected poems of Maurice
Thompson (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1892), under the title of "A
Prelude."

_Sesostris._--Of this poem Mr. Stoddard has the high praise that in
imaginative quality it is unequalled in nineteenth century literature,
unless by Leigh Hunt's sonnet on