INTRODUCTION A GREAT many of the most interesting and, ultimately, the most valuable short poems in English literature show the poet in his function of prophet and seer. He looks out upon nature and his fellow-men and in upon his own soul, with its complex of aspiration and disappointment, and in all this bewildering circumstance he sees further than other men see; he teaches them how to meet the issues of life, or presents by his imagination, in Ruskin's phrase, "noble grounds for noble emotions." In this conception the poet is an interpreter, actuated not only by emotion and the gift of expression but by insight and wisdom. No other function of the poet is more universally recognized. Poet and prophet were the same with the Hebrews, and no men now are more truly infidels than those who deny the wisdom of the poets. The key to the composition of this volume is that these poems are interpretative. They are various in aspect and in temper; but in all of them the poet is making his "perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of things." The poetry, here, is not the spontaneous outburst of the poet's heart; it softens that, and adds to it a |