CONTENTS.
| Telulah Spring, | Frontispiece |
| Inscription, | [5] |
| Introduction, | [11] |
| Life, | [17] |
| Dream of a Fairy, | [18] |
| Together, | [20] |
| Be Not Discouraged, | [21] |
| Forest Delights, | [22] |
| Parting, | [23] |
| Song, | [24] |
| God’s Love, | [25] |
| Dreams, | [26] |
| Lines on Life, | [28] |
| Where are the Hearts we Cherished So? | [29] |
| Contentment, | [31] |
| The Telulah Spring, | [33] |
| Daybreak, | [36] |
| To a Brown Thrush, | [37] |
| Hope, | [38] |
| The Angel of Home, | [39] |
| To My Sister, | [40] |
| Woman, | [40] |
| The Fox River, | [41] |
| A Little Grave, | [42] |
| Autumn Days, | [43] |
| In Heaven, | [44] |
| Idleness, | [46] |
| The River, | [47] |
| The Crown of Fame, | [49] |
| Elegy on the Death of Hon. C. B. Clark, | [52] |
| A Reverie, | [53] |
| Opportunity, | [56] |
| Lines Written on Hearing a Gentleman remark: “God Bless Dear Woman.” | [57] |
| My Lady Fair, | [58] |
| To a Firefly, | [59] |
| My Old New England Home, | [60] |
| A Lover’s Lament, | [62] |
| Faces That are Gone, | [63] |
| The True Way, | [65] |
| Pitcher or Jug, | [66] |
| Two Lives, | [67] |
| Meditation, | [68] |
| Tempus Fugit, | [70] |
| Gladness, | [71] |
| The Rainbow, | [71] |
| MISCELLANEOUS VERSES. | |
| The Dawn o’ Spring, | [75] |
| Zeeke Bullard’s Farm, | [76] |
| Uncle Nick, on Eddication, | [80] |
| Uncle Nick, on Gossipers, | [82] |
| The Art o’ Knowin’ How, | [84] |
| Mother’s Photograph, | [86] |
| Fifty Years, | [88] |
| A Maiden Wondrous Fair, | [89] |
| Wealth and Want, | [92] |
| Childhood, | [93] |
| The Lassie O’er the Way, | [94] |
INTRODUCTION.
Henry Reed Conant was born in Janesville, Wis., on the seventeenth day of February, 1872. When four years of age he removed to Vermont, the native state of his parents Henry Clay and Dora Evaline (Reed) Conant. Henry was educated in the public schools and at the Morrisville “People’s Academy,” Vermont, and in his fifteenth year returned to the west.
He inherited from his New England ancestors a deep love of nature, and pronounced religious and moral strength, which tinge the whole body of his rhymes and poems. Like many poets in their juvenile days Mr. Conant’s first lines were simple and artless, and the world of critics can hardly assail him for penning his first rhymes in honor of his “first love,” thus:
“Of all the lassies in the land
That e’er I chanced to view,
Methinks the fairest one I saw
Had sparkling eyes of blue.”
His first published poem appeared in a little story paper, February, 1890, at Belvidere, Ills. Nearly all of Mr. Conant’s poems were written in Wisconsin, his native state. The selected poems forming this volume reflect the young poet’s individuality to a sensible degree. The trend of his thoughts and genius is toward the more solemn and religious aspects of nature, and of human experience. He dwells in the forest’s shade, on the banks of rivers flowing through lea and woodland, by the grave of a little child, and wanders back to his old New England home—to the scenes of his childhood.