filled in, do I make known what your relation is to these interpretations of mine resulting from a spirit, life, thought, environment which have similarly come to us and have similarly affected us.     

       I call this book "Toward the Gulf," a title importing a continuation of the attempts of Spoon River and The Great Valley to mirror the age and the country in which we live. It does not matter which one of these books carries your name and makes these acknowledgments; so far, anyway, as the opportunity is concerned for expressing my appreciation of your friendship and the great esteem and affectionate interest in which I hold you.     

       EDGAR LEE MASTERS.     

       The following poems were first printed in the publications indicated:     

       Toward the Gulf, The Lake Boats, The Loom, Tomorrow is my Birthday, Dear Old Dick, The Letter, My Light with Yours, Widow LaRue, Neanderthal, in Reedy's Mirror.     

       Draw the Sword, Oh Republic, in the Independent.     

       Canticle of the Race, in Poetry, a Magazine of Verse.     

       Friar Yves, in the Cosmopolitan Magazine.     

       "I pay my debt for Lafayette and Rochambeau," in Fashions of the Hour.     

  

  

       TOWARD THE GULF     

      Dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt 

      From the Cordilleran Highlands, From the Height of Land Far north. From the Lake of the Woods, From Rainy Lake, From Itasca's springs. From the snow and the ice Of the mountains, Breathed on by the sun, And given life, Awakened by kisses of fire, Moving, gliding as brightest hyaline Down the cliffs, Down the hills, Over the stones. Trickling as rills; Swiftly running as mountain brooks; Swirling through runnels of rock; Curving in 

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