The best refutation of Aldrich is furnished by Aldrich himself. The years between 1881 and 1890, the period of his editorship of the _Atlantic Monthly_, were a time of small production, of pause and calm, of ripening, of final adjustment. Following his resignation of the editorship, he began again actively to produce poetry and now for ten or twelve years he worked in contemporary life--in occasional and commemorative odes, monodies and elegies; in studies of the deeper meanings of life; in problems of death and of destiny. The volumes of 1891, 1895, and 1896 contain the soul of all his poetry. From them he omitted practically nothing when at last he made up the definitive edition of his work. The Aldrich of the sixties and the seventies had been trivial, artificial, sentimental; the Aldrich who wrote in the nineties had a purpose: he worked now in the deeps of life; he was in earnest; he had a message. It is significant in view of his oft expressed theories of poetry that when in 1897 Stedman asked him to indicate his best lyrics for publication in the _American Anthology_, he chose these: "Shaw Memorial Ode," "Outward Bound," "Andromeda," "Reminiscence," "The Last Cæsar," "Alice Yeaton's Son," "Unguarded Gates," "A Shadow of the Night," "Monody on Wendell Phillips," "To Hafiz," "Prescience," "Santo Domingo," "Tennyson," "Memory," "Twilight," "Quits"--all but one of them, "Prescience," first published after 1891. There are no "apricots and dewberries" about these masterly lyrics; they deal with no such trivialities as the fall of an eyelash. They thrill with the problems of life and with experience. It was not until this later period that the poet could say to a bereaved friend: "You will recall a poem of mine entitled 'A Shadow of the Night.' There is a passage here and there that might possibly appeal to you"--a severe test, but one that reveals the true poet. What has he for his generation? What has he for the crises of life, inevitably must be asked at last of every poet. His change of ideals he voiced in "Andromeda": The smooth-worn coin and threadbare classic phrase Of Grecian myths that did beguile my youth Beguile me not as in the olden days: I think more grace and beauty dwell with truth. Now in the rich afternoon of his art the poet is no longer content to echo the music of masters. He has awakened to the deeper meanings of life; he is himself a master; he now has something to say, and the years of his apprenticeship have given him a flawless style in which to say it. No other American poet has approached the perfect art of these later lyrics. Who else on this side of the water could have written "The Sisters' Tragedy," with its melody, its finish, its distinction of phrase?