I wish, therefore, thus publicly to thank those who have given this substantial earnest of their appreciation.
Any opinion or criticism, favorable or unfavorable, or any suggestion or correction on thought, arrangement, typography, or other point, that the reader may see fit to express, is not only invited and encouraged, but will be most gratefully received and carefully considered.
One word more. If a selection will not bear a second reading, or a third, a fourth, or a fiftieth reading; if it does not grow better and better at each reading; if it does not lift the soul to a higher plane, a nobler aim, a purer life, and a grander view; if at each successive reading something does not come out of it and enter the heart, and then pass back into the poem again, and thus again and again, each beautifying and ennobling the other, like a sunset halo among the clouds and the liquid, translucent image thereof in the mirroring lake, then it is no true poem, and should be cast aside.
The only proof of the excellence of a poem is that it makes the heart larger and the soul nobler for having read it, and that at each successive reading both the poem and the reader grow better and better.
Believing, as I do, that poetry is nothing less than the interpretation of the Divine in the human heart (whether in the mood of tears or of laughter), I can but hope, in entrusting these “children of the brain” to the care of others, that in the heart of each little waif some good may be found, some song may be heard, some beauty be revealed, some experience be verified.
C. W. W.
Lincoln, 22 June, 1892.