<p>THIS COLLECTION OF SOUTHERN POETS AND POEMS, 1606-1860, is made not from the viewpoint of a literary critic but that of a student of history interested in how the experiences of the Southern people have been reflected in verse. </p><p><br></p><p>Poetry contains a kind of truth not found in other forms of expression. We are guided by the advice of William Gilmore Simms, the father of Southern literature:</p><p> </p><p>"The emotional literature of a people is as necessary to the philosophical historian as the mere details of events in the progress of a nation. This is essential to the reputation of the Southern people, as illustrating their feelings, sentiments, ideas and opinions - the motives which influenced their actions, and the objects which they had in contemplation, and which seemed to them to justify the struggle in which they were engaged."</p><p>This is the first in a planned five-volume series that will trace with verse the four hundred year history of the people of the South and The Land They Loved.</p>