But I believe in a movement towards a service in which worship shall be the chief element; and I don’t think I am a step nearer Episcopacy, either. I am trying to like that, because I have always been unjustly prejudiced against it, but I am a born Independent at heart.... The years of Miss Larcom’s greatest poetical production were brought to a close by the printing, in 1880, of “The Wild Roses of Cape Ann.” Her works were bound together in a Household Edition, in 1884. After this, she wrote continually for the magazines, and on anniversary occasions of various kinds. Some of these verses were included, with a few new ones, in the booklet “Easter Gleams,” and in the selection of religious poems, called “At the Beautiful Gate,” but no noted additions were made to her poems after this, though there are many of her lines of great beauty, scattered through the pages of current ephemeral literature, up to the time of her death. TO S. T. PICKARD. BETHEL, ME., September 30, 1880. MY DEAR MR. PICKARD--I go to-morrow to Berlin Falls, New Hampshire, to stay at the Cascade House until I have finished reading my proof.[7] I wish to thank you for your interest in the book about to be. It will have more character and more local color than the other; but I do not write for critics, but for my friends, as the dedication will show, and I do not care much whether critics like it or not, provided my friends do. I can conceive of no greater damper upon one’s poetic attempts than the cold water of criticism. It is from heart to heart, from friend to friend, that I write; and I find in that the highest inspiration to do my best. Of course I am glad to enlarge the circle of my friends in this way; and poetry has amply repaid me in the coin of friendship. One gives out life in writing; and nothing but life in return--life enlarged and filled--gives any true satisfaction. Of course I shall send you a copy, not editorially, but personally. The “Wild Roses” were fragrant, and delighted some of the critics, even, for in addition to those that grew along Cape Ann, there were many cultivated ones, that blossomed beside the still waters of thought, and in the quiet retreats of meditation:-- “A Rose is sweet, No matter where it grows: and roses grow Nursed by the pure heavens, and the strengthening earth, Wherever men will let them. Every waste And solitary place is glad for them, Since the old prophets sang, so, until now.” “Phebe” has a prominent place in the book--the poem that drew from Mr. Howells, when he was editor of the “Atlantic,” a most graceful note of acceptance:-- MY DEAR MISS LARCOM,--You take rejections so sweetly, that I have scarcely the heart to accept anything of yours. But I do like “Phebe,” and I am going to keep her. “Shared” excited admiration; and was pronounced by one competent critic to be the best religious lyric of the decade:--