and Other Poems
By William Ellery Leonard
12mo (7-1/2 ins.) Textured, tan paper-covered boards, with impressed, gilded lettering. Brown cloth spine with gilded lettering. The top edge of the pages are gilded. Published by B. W. Huebsch, New York, in 1912. This is a first edition, first printing. There are 192 pages.
The Superscription (written for the wife he had recently lost to suicide):
White soul, too white for us who work with clay
Sweet mistress of the gentle flowers and birds,
Harshly compelled to speak your loving words
So long but to the subtle beasts of prey:
I was your earthly husband for a day,
Too strange a nature for an eye so blue;
And yet so honest was my love to you,
I gave you something ere you went away....
I've set no stone on the grave out there
Whither in all my years I shall not go;
But, conquering pain, and pity, and despair,
I bind these leaves with solemn hands and slow:
My poems -- all my sacred best of life --
Be yours forever, O my wife, my wife!
