Excerpt from Songs of Content: A Volume of Verse

I undertook to prepare the poems of Ralph Erwin Gibbs for publication, primarily because the poetic nature and the noble character of the young man had so endeared him to hisfassociates that it seemed fitting to erect out of his own work some monument that might keep his memory fair among us and comfort those by whom he was most beloved. But I had not worked deep into his manuscripts before the conviction came that not to have preserved the best of them for the public would have been no mere mistake, but an in justice. Of his lyrics the more beautiful, and of his poems of life and death the more seriously considered, deserve an honorable place in the estimation of Californians. If my ih terest in the author does not deceive me, they will win their way not only where promise untimely stricken is deplored, but where the comfort and the grace of art are for their own sakes welcomed. To our prosaic world there is but rarely vouchsafed the seer who with calm regard contemplates mystery, for whom deity wears a human air, and corrup tion assumes the incorruptibility of ideal form - the magician, at whose touch life and language kindle into song and the portals of the heart swing open. When the gods have be gun to dower in poetic wise some gracious youth, and we to suspect him of the rapturous gift, - if then they love him be yond measure, and take him, it is but natural that we should cherish with uncritical affection whatever fragment of his art he may have left; that we should delight to conjecture what manner of poet he might have been, what blessing of com forter. All this have some of us, of diverse tastes, done in respect of these soncs or content. We have also tried the impartial view; and we think that others will share with us our generous error, if error it be, that some two or three hun dred verses (and that is much) of this young man's making deserve, independently of personal considerations, to be called poetry and to live; that they are of the stuff that engages the sympathies of men for semblances not ephemeral, of the strain that enhances joy and lightens sorrow.

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