Excerpt from War-Time Echoes: Patriotic Poems, Heroic and Pathetic, Humorous and Dialectic, of the Spanish-American War And yet, in their happiest flights of description, the orator and the historian may not hope to equal in vividness and beauty the verbal pictures the poets have drawn for us. In this volume, which is a companion to Martial Recitations, every phase of the short, sharp struggle is represented by its best poem. The wreck of the Maine, the farewell, the camp, the field, the trench, the charge, the sea-fight, the hospital, the soldier's burial, the angels of the Red Cross, the brave wives and mothers, the crowning victory, the soldier's return and his welcome home, - all these the poets have painted for us in words that fairly sparkle, and glow and burn. The interest of the present volume springs, of course, from the selections themselves; and praise, if any is due, belongs to the poets herein represented, rather than to the compiler. Borrowing a beautiful figure from Montaigne, he may say, - I have culled the flowers and furnished the thread that binds them together; but their beauty and fragrance is their own. This volume, then, cannot fail in interest for every patriot. In the hope that it may receive as warm a welcome as that accorded to Martial Recitations, and that it may foster a deeper love for our country whose past is so glorious and whose future is so promising, this book is sent forth upon its mission. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.