The collection assembles the poet's poems and prose across genres, carefully revised and organized to present narrative and legendary poems, nature lyrics, subjective and religious verse, anti-slavery and labor-and-reform songs, personal poems, and tales and sketches. It also gathers a journal, portraits and tributes, historical papers, and essays addressing politics and social change. Brief headnotes and publication dates accompany many pieces and an appendix restores early discarded poems to show the author's development. Recurring themes include rural life, memory, faith, moral protest, and civic conscience, rendered in both lyric and narrative modes.