William Morton Payne

William Morton Payne (1858–1919) was an American educator, literary critic and writer, born at Newburyport, Massachusetts.

The four sonnets given here are those that Edmund Clarence Stedman printed under his name in An American Anthology, 1787–1900 (1900): two on the Wagner operas Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, one on the theatre, and one on the spring.