James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
Preface
ByL
Thus: of the great happenings of these twenty centuries, to which dates can be accurately fixed, there are few to which no reference is made in these pages. The battles of early Scotch and English history; those of our own Revolution, and of the various struggles for freedom that have reddened the soil of Poland, Switzerland, Ireland, Italy, France and Cuba; the hard fought fields which mark the different chapters of the ever-fascinating Napoleonic story, the charge at Balaklava, the defence of the Alamo, the tragic deaths of Marie Antoinette, Emmett, Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley; the long struggle for the abolition of slavery and the battles which brought it to a close are here treated by some of the greatest of English and American poets, and by many of the humblest as well. While striving earnestly to maintain a high literary standard, the compilers have in many instances deemed the theme strong enough to atone for obvious poetical defects. A number of poems, chiefly sonnets, have been used to mark the days of birth or death of distinguished persons, whose lives have appealed to the poetic imagination. Among those thus celebrated are Washington, Lincoln, Keats, Shelley, Shakespeare, Webster, Dickens, Thackeray, Longfellow and scores of others. The historical notes which accompany the poems are, of necessity, brief and free from verbiage, but they have been prepared with every regard for accuracy and conciseness and, it is hoped, will add materially to the value of the book.