women, accustomed to field and forest, and not to the city; simple, natural, unaffected,—of affectionate natures, vivid imagination, and quick and earnest sympathies,—greatly loving Nature; and their poems are reflections of their thoughts, fancies, sympathies, and aspirations.
They are poems of the heart, written for themselves and a small circle, without expectation of receiving the praises of the world. They are simple and natural, harmonious in rhythm and cadence, and without attempt at singularity of expression—a skilful adaptation of words used in new senses and connections, to startle and surprise; in which kind of word-painting too much of our modern poetry consists. "Our modern dramatists," a great critic has said—and it may be said with the same truth of many modern poets who are not dramatists—"appeal not to Nature or the heart, but—to the readers of modern poetry. Words and paper, each couleur de rose, are the two requisites of a fashionable style."
If these poems commend themselves to those who read them, it will be because they appeal to Nature and the heart; because they are the effusions of pure, thoughtful, refined intellects,—displaying the
