Gilder was almost exclusively a lyric poet. His units are very brief,—there are more than five hundred in the one-volume “Complete” edition,—very few extending to the one hundred lines ordained by Poe. Even among lyrics, moreover, he set distinct boundaries to his field. Among his metropolitan fellows—Taylor, Stoddard, Aldrich, Stedman, and the others—he was notable in not writing imitative and reminiscent poetry. These men must have been rather definitely in the back of his mind when he wrote:
Some from books resound their rhymes—
Set them ringing with a faint,
Sorrowful, and sweet, and quaint
Memory of the olden times,
Like the sound of evening chimes.
And too many of his contemporaries did not follow as well as he the admonition,
Tell to the wind
Thy private woes, but not to human ear.
There was still a world of beauty left for him, first of all in songs of love. It is a chaste and disembodied passion that he celebrated in frequent groups of song. The lady is a delight to the eye, modest, timid, and yet all-generous; the lover eager, gentle, adoring, and inspired to nobility. What Gilder recorded in one of the earliest of these lyrics seems in large measure to hold true of them all. After an enumeration of the lady’s charms and the charm she bestowed upon earth and sky, he continued: