port (one
glass only: alas, that Vachel should abstain!) the state of the Muse
to-day. He deems that she now has fled from cities to dwell on the
robuster champaigns of Illinois and Kansas. Would that I could agree;
but I see her in the cities and everywhere, set down to menial
taskwork. She were better in exile, on Ibsen's sand dunes or
Maeterlinck's bee farm. But in America the times are very evil.
Prodigious convulsion of production, the grinding of mighty forces, the
noise and rushings of winds--and what avails? _Parturiunt montes_ ...you
know the rest. The ridiculous mice squeak and scamper on the granary
floor. They may play undisturbed, for the real poets, those great gray
felines, are sifting loam under Westminster. Gramercy Park and the
Poetry Society see them not.

It matters not. With this little book my task is done. Vachel and I sail
to-morrow for Nova Zembla.

_The Grotto, Yonkers._

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

A second edition of "Rari Nantes" having been called for, I have added
three more poems, Esquimodes written since arriving here. Also the
"Prayer for Warm Weather," by Vachel Lindsay, is included, at his
express request. The success of the first edition has been very
gratifying to me. My publishers will please send reviews to _Bleak
House, Nova Zembla_.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

The rigorous climate of Nova Zembla I find most stimulating to
production, and therefore in this new edition I am able to include
several new poems. "The Ode to a Seamew," the "Fracas on an Ice Floe,"
and the sequence of triolimericks are all new. If I have been able to
convey anything of the bracing vigour of the Nova Zembla _locale_ the
praise is due to my friendly and suggestive critic, the editor of
_Gooseflesh_, the leading Nova Zemblan review.

Vachel Lindsay's new book, "The Tango," has not yet appeared, therefore
I may perhaps say here that he is hard at work on an "Ode to the Gulf
Stream," which has great promise.

The success of this little book has been such that I am encouraged to
hope that the publisher's exemption of royalties will soon be worked
off.

THE SKIPPER

I have been reading again that most delightful of all autobiographies,
"A Personal Record," by Joseph Conrad. Mr. Conrad's mind is so rich, it
has been so well mulched by years of vigorous life and sober thinking,
that it pushes tendrils of radiant speculation into every crevice of the
structure upon which it busie