I need offer no apology for presenting to the public this volume of Gen. Albert Pike's Poems; the poems are too good to be lost, and I wonder that a collection of the author's writings has not been published for general circulation long since. Being a great admirer of those of the poems which I had read, I sought and obtained the sanction of the celebrated author's daughter, Miss Lilian Pike, since become Mrs. Roome, to publish same, and induced her to write the accompanying splendid biographical sketch of her honored father.
I was encouraged to carry out a previous resolution to publish the book by reading the following tribute to the author, contributed to The Gazette in May, 1899, by Mrs. Eldridge Greening, of Camden, Ark., who regretted, "that with his unquestioned poetic genius, he did not give to the world a book of poems, such as he only could produce, and write his name on Fame's glorious temple, beside those of the greatest poets of the past and present age: - "
