TO HER FRIENDS:
These verses are printed for you, as a Memorial of her whom we have lost. They are transcribed exactly from a book of them, copied and arranged by her within a year, or thereabouts, before her death, and, I think, undoubtedly intended by her for private publication. Some are, to me, impressively pathetic; one such piece as 'A Warm Day in Autumn' would justify the book. Blank pages scattered in the MS. show that new poems were in contemplation which would have made less abrupt the sequence of grave and gay. I have not felt at liberty to make any alterations, though the author, had she lived, would perhaps, here and there, have done so. The prose piece called Serenity' was placed by her in her book of her poetry, and was a letter to the New York Tribune, Jan. 21, 1905. I have included it, as it gives partly, perhaps, the secret of the wonderful attraction she had for her friends. If I may trust my own judgment, very fine lines occur in the first and last poems in the collection, and elsewhere; the last was found in her Prayer Book at Psalm 90, one of the Psalms used in the Office for Burial. No comment is necessary upon these verses; all of them, the lighter as well as the graver, will be interesting to you.
J. R. S.
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