Chapter I: Front Matter

POEMS

BY
WILLIAM D. HOWELLS

BOSTON
TICKNOR AND COMPANY
211 TREMONT STREET
MDCCCLXXXVI

COPYRIGHT, 1873, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY
AND 1885, BY WILLIAM D. HOWELLS.

_All rights reserved._

University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
The Pilot's Story 3
Forlorn 13
Pleasure-Pain 19
In August 26
The Empty House 27
Bubbles 29
Lost Beliefs 31
Louis Lebeau's Conversion 32
Caprice 49
Sweet Clover 51
The Royal Portraits 54
The Faithful of the Gonzaga 59
The First Cricket 77
The Mulberries 79
Before the Gate 84
Clement 86
By the Sea 97
Saint Christopher 98
Elegy on John Butler Howells 100
Thanksgiving 105
A Springtime 106
In Earliest Spring 108
The Bobolinks are Singing 110
Prelude 113
The Movers 115
Through the Meadow 120
Gone 122
The Sarcastic Fair 123
Rapture 124
Dead 125
The Doubt 127
The Thorn 129
The Mysteries 130
The Battle in the Clouds 131
For One of the Killed 133
The Two Wives 134
Bereaved 136
The Snow-Birds 138
Vagary 139
Feuerbilder 141
Avery 143
Bopeep: A Pastoral 148
While she sang 160
A Poet 163
Convention 164
The Poet Friends 165
No Love Lost 166
The Song the Oriole sings 199
Pordenone 201
The Long Days 223

THE PILOT'S STORY.

I.

It was a story the pilot told, with his back to his hearers,--
Keeping his hand on the wheel and his eye on the globe of the
jack-staff,
Holding the boat to the shore and out of the sweep of the current,
Lightly turning aside for the heavy logs of the drift-wood,
Widely shunning the snags that made us sardonic obeisance.