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LONGFELLOW: WHITTIER: BRYANT
HOLMES: LOWELL: EMERSON

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BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1893

Copyright, 1879,

BY HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO.

Copyright, 1892,

BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

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THE general use which has followed the first publication of American Poems confirms the editor in his belief that such a book has a real place in our educational system, and he is gratified by the wide and cordial recognition which it has received. The few criticisms which have been offered seem mainly to have sprung from a hasty consideration of its intention. It does not profess to be a representative volume of American poetry, nor, in a comprehensive way, of the poets whose works are included in it, but, because the poems are of themselves worthy and the group is American in origin and tone, the book has a significance which justifies its title. The brief sketches of the authors contained in it were necessarily limited to the main facts of their literary life, but the editor, in reviewing his work under the more favorable conditions of a completed book and lapse of time, perceives with renewed and stronger feeling how pure and admirable is the spirit in which these American poets have wrought, how high an ideal has been before them, and with what grace and beauty their lives have reinforced their poems! Surely, the poets have given

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