1872] Music and Poetry 



form. A few of these, representing a narrow vein of 

 fancy, have always seemed to me worth while. 1 



Real poetry (as distinguished from mere verse) Music a 

 has always had a compelling hold on me. Music, closed 

 unfortunately, has been more or less of a closed book 

 book, though I take delight in what may be called 

 "Songs in Words of One Syllable." Ballads, old or 

 new, minor laments of oppressed races, all direct 

 appeals from the heart of man or nation, simply and 

 nobly phrased, stir me as they do others. Recently 

 the setting to music of some of my own lines by an 

 accomplished composer, Herman T. Koerner of 

 Buffalo, has given me a special pleasure. But the 

 intricacies of chamber music and the like, "the 

 structure brave, the manifold music" of Browning's 

 "Abt Vogler," fail to touch me. 



During my college course three poets, Browning, 

 Emerson, and Lowell, strongly appealed to me. To 

 a degree, also, I found satisfaction in Longfellow, 

 Holmes, and Brownell. Of foreign poets, Schiller 

 pleased me most; his dramas well repay the agony 

 incident to German syntax. 



Of Browning (as well as of both Emerson and Favorite 

 Lowell) I already knew something before going to i ets 

 college; a tiny volume entitled "Lyrics of Life" 

 had fallen into my hands, and profoundly impressed 

 me, though parts of it were grievously obscure. At 

 that time one of our neighbors, a Scotchman named 

 Mclntosh, wrote a doggerel review which I thought 

 then (and still think) had a certain value: 



1 A number of my poems, written at intervals and mostly while at leisure on 

 the sea or on trains, have been privately printed (but never published) under 

 the title, "To Barbara, and Other Verses." 



