I would that in such wings of gold, I could my weary heart up-fold; I would I could look down unmoved, (Unloving as I am unloved,) And while the world throngs on beneath, Smooth down my cares, and calmly breathe; And never sad with others’ sadness, And never glad with others’ gladness, Listen, unstirred, to knell or chime, And, lapped in quiet, bide my time. Illustration: (‡ decoration) Illustration: (‡ decoration) RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. POET AND JOURNALIST. WITH no commanding antecedents to support him, Richard Henry Stoddard has, step by step, fought his way to a position which is alike creditable to his indomitable energy and his genius. Stoddard was born July 2, 1825, at Hingham, Mass. His father was a sea-captain, who, while the poet was yet in his early youth, sailed for Sweden. Tidings of his vessel never came back,――this was in 1835. The mother removed, the same year, with her son to New York, where he attended the public schools of the city. Necessity compelled the widow, as soon as his age permitted, to put young Stoddard to work, and he was placed in an iron foundry to learn this trade. “Here he worked for some years,” says one of his biographers, “dreaming in the intervals of his toil, and even then moulding his thoughts into the symmetry of verse while he moulded the moulten metal into shapes of grace.” At the same time he pursued a course of private reading and study, and began to write poems and sketches for his own pleasure. It was in 1847 that the earliest blossoms of his genius appeared in the “Union Magazine,” which gave evidence that his mind as well as his body was toiling. In 1848 he issued a small volume of poems entitled, “Footprints,” which contained some pieces of merit; but he afterwards suppressed the entire edition. About this time his health failed and, to recuperate, he gave up, temporarily, his mechanical vocation; but literature took such possession of him that he never returned to the foundry. In 1852 he issued his second volume entitled, “Poems,” and became a regular contributor to the magazines. In 1860 he was made literary editor of the “New York World,” which position he retained until 1870, and since 1880 he has held a similar position on the “New York Mail and Express.” He, also, from 1853 to 1873 held a government position in the Custom House of New York. During this time Mr. Stoddard also edited a number of works with prefaces and introductions by himself, among which may be mentioned the “Bric-a-Brac Series.” Prominent titles of the author’s own books are “Songs of Summer,” which appeared in 1856; “The King’s Bell,” a series of most delicate suggestive pictures, (1862); “Abraham Lincoln, A Horatian Ode,” (1865); “The Book of the East,” poems, (1871); a collective edition entitled, “Poems,” (1880), and “The Lion’s Cub,” poems, (1890).