Page:Leaves on the tide and other poems.djvu/15



author of this volume, like Edmund Clarence Stedman, was a banker-poet. For many years he led an active business life in the city of Gloucester, Massachusetts, but his hours of leisure were largely given to books and literature. A considerable number of poems from his pen were printed in the Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's Magazine, the Independent, and other periodicals, but they were never gathered by him for book publication. It has seemed to his children, and to his friend the publisher, that a collection should be made of the published poems, and of others that were written for special occasions or are representative of his wide interest and his poetic gift.

The opening group in the present volume—"Leaves on the Tide"—was so named by Mr. Howells when he used the half dozen pieces in the Atlantic for October, 1875. It is interesting to recall Mr. Howells's reference to Mr. Rich in his "Recollections of an Atlantic Editorship," written for the Fiftieth Anniversary Number of the magazine. Speaking of the welcome that, as an editor, he gave to the work of Maurice Thompson, he adds that "he accepted every one of the twelve pieces