quotes such comments as "His book has sterling merit and evinces soundness of heart and facility of rhyme," from the London Morning Post; "Mr. Abbey tells his story clearly and effectively; his sympathies are manly, warm, and true," from the London Academy; and "The stories . . . are told with much beauty of diction and with rich poetic feeling, and throughout them all runs a high moral purpose," from the Leeds Mercury (unnumbered pages following p. 149 of Phaëthon). Especially admired was Abbey's widely anthologized inspirational poem "What Do We Plant?"—a poem that was often chosen as a recitation piece and that was set to music by Aaron Copland for chorus and piano and published in 1941.A genial figure, Abbey was well liked by both his literary and his business associates; his warm obituary in the Bookman (1912) notes "a most generous friendliness coupled with a shy modesty" (p. 323), and according to the Magazine of Poetry, vol. 1, no. 1 (1889), "It is doubtful if he would know how to make an enemy" (p. 70). Upon his death of heart disease in a sanitarium in Tenafly, New Jersey, the respect and affection in which Abbey was held in his home city was reflected in the inscription placed on his headstone: "The Bard of Kingston." Bibliography Little biographical material has been published about Henry Abbey. He is listed in: G. F. Bacon, Kingston and Rondout, Their Representative Business Men and Points of Interest (1892); Who's Who in New York City and State (1904); and Who's Who in America, 1910-1911. Contemporary critical notice of his work is in: "A Poetical Lot," Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 1869; "Open Letters," Century, July 1884; and Pierre LaRose, "The Very Minor Poet,"Chap-book, 15 Nov. 1897. Posthumous evaluations are in: Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, eds., American Authors: 1600-1900 (1938), and John Thorn, "The Bard of Kingston," Kingston (N.Y.) Times, 17 Nov. 2005. A warm assessment of his life and work is in an obituary notice by Ernest Ingersoll in the Bookman, May 1912. May Dreams (1862) Ralph and other Poems (1866) Stories in Verse (1869) Ballads of Good Deeds (1872) Poems (1879) The City of Success and other Poems (1883) Dream of Love (1910) Style In much of his work, Abbey displays traditional characteristics of the nineteenth-century American poetic approach. He uses inversions and has fluid feel; most commonly known for his "Disregard women,