NOTICE OF COPYRIGHTS. I. American poems in this volume within the legal protection of copyright are used by the courteous permission of the owners, either the publishers named in the following list or the authors or their representatives in the subsequent one,who reserve all their rights. So far as practicable, permission has been secured also for poems out of copyright. 1904. PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY. Messrs. D. APPLETON & Co., New York.-W. C. Bryant "The Crowded Street." Messrs. C. C. BIRCHARD & Co., Boston.-J. V. Cheney: "The Man with the Hoe (A Reply)." The CENTURY Co., New York.-W. H. Hayne: "Moonlight Song of the Mocking Bird." COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, New York.-W. H. Hayne: "An Autumn Breeze." THE CRITIC, New York.-W. H. Hayne: "Night Mists." 66 Al Messrs. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Boston.-T B. Aldrich : "Broken Music," "On an Intaglio Head of Minerva," "Outward Bound;" Arlo Bates: "There is Such Power" Helen G. Cone: "A. Yellow Pansy;" Louise I. Guiney: "The Wild Ride;" O. W. Holmes: "Contentment;" H. W. Longfellow: "Excelsior,' ""Retribution;" J. R. Lowell: Autograph," "Rhocus," "Yussouf;" Harriet. W. Preston-: "The King's Highway;" E. R. Sill: "The Fools frayer ; E. C. Stedman: "Pan in Wall Street; W. J. Story: "Perseverance;" Edith M. Thomas: 66 Augury" T. Trowbridge: "The Vagabonds." The J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, Philadelphia.-Charlotte F. vii Messrs. LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Boston.-J. H. Chadwick: "The Making of Man ;" Gertrude Hall. "The Spell; Louise C. Moulton: "At Midsummer,' ""A Painted Fan.' The LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY, Boston.-P. H. Hayne: "Pre-Existence,' ""Ode to Sleep; " C. Scollard: "The Book Stall." The OUTLOOK COMPANY, New York.-H. van Dyke: "Work." Messrs. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York.-M. J. Cawein: "Proem." Messrs. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York.-Mary M. Dodge: "Once Before;" Julia C. R. Dorr: "Thy Songs and Mine." Messrs. SMALL, MAYNARD & Co., Boston.-B. Carman: "Hack and Hew;" R. Hovey: "Beethoven's Third Symphony." The WHITAKER & RAY COMPANY, San Francisco.-C. H. (Joaquin) Miller: "Above the Clouds," "A California Christmas," "Proem (Isles of the Amazons)." II. American poems in this volume by the authors whose names are given below are the copyrighted property of the authors, or of their representatives named in parenthesis, and may not be reprinted without their permission, which for the present work has been courteously granted. 1904. PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY. H. A. Beers; C. T. Brooks (Mrs. Harriet Lyman Brooks); R. J. Burdette; Mary A. De Vere; A. W. H. Eaton; R. W. Gilder; O. Huckel; R. M. Johnson; E. Markham; F. Sewall; J. M. Thompson (Mrs. J. M. Thompson); W. Whitman (H. Taubel, Literary Executor); Ella W. Wilcox. THE PLACE OF POETRY IN LIFE. BY CHARLES FRANCIS RICHARDSON. BEAUTY, Sooner or later, comes to its own; but no man perceives it all at once. Even the undying poetry of the world around us must be brought to the notice of growing minds. It is no wonder, then, that a taste for poetry in literature is often undeveloped. Some people read a great deal of poetry, with constant zest and unfailing advantage; others, though they may be "great readers" of other classes of literature, find little pleasure or profit in poetry. Is it a duty to read poetry? Should those who seem to have no natural taste for it endeavor to cultivate a taste; or should they rest content with the conclusion that certain minds appreciate, and profit by, poetical compositions, while other minds have no capacity for their enjoyment? It may not be a downright duty to like poetry, or to try to like it; but certainly it is a misfortune that so large and lovely a division of the world's literature should be lost to any reader. The absence of a poetic taste is a sad indication of a lack of the imaginative faculty; and without imagination what is life? If a reader finds that the ideal has little or no place in his intellectual existence or in his daily processes of thought and feeling, then he should consider, with all soberness, the fact that a Godgiven power is slipping away from him-a power without which his best faculties must become atrophied; without which he loses the greater part of the enjoyment of life, day by day; without which, in very truth, he cannot see all the glory of the open door of the Kingdom of Heaven. Children are poets; they find fairy-land in a poor broken set of toy crockery or in a ragged company of brokennosed dolls. Their powers of imagination ought never to be lost in the humdrum affairs of a worka-day world; their habit of discovering the ideal in the real is one which cannot be laid aside without great detriment to the individual life and character. There may, then, be persons who "have no capacity for poetry," and who cannot cultivate a taste for it; but this inability, if real, is to be mourned as a mental blindness and deafness, shutting out the greater part of the universe from sight and hearing; for "the most real things in the world are those that neither men nor children can see." There is, of course, a great deal of nobly imaginative literature which is not poetry, in the technical sense; but if one can read Hawthorne or the Waverley Novels with pleasure, he is quite sure to find no stumbling-block in "Ulalume" or "The Lady of the Lake." It is the poetic spirit that we should recognize and take to our hearts, whatever may be the outward form in which it may be enshrined. Poetry, said Poe, is "the rhythmical creation of beauty ";-that is, it is one of many ways of expressing in permanently beautiful form man's ideas of what he has seen or imagined. No other division of creative art possesses such universality, such intelligibility, as does this art of song. The beginning of the love of poetry lies in the individual mind; for its development one must seek his material from the treasures around him, and must work out his methods of utilizing that material with the same care that he applies to other departments of intellectual exercise. Let him, if he finds his taste in need of cultivation, begin with such poems as he likes; read them more than once; learn their teachings; apprehend their inner spirit and purpose. Whatever the beginning, it is sure to lead to something better, if the reader will but resolutely determine to know what the writer meant to say; to see the picture that he portrayed ; and to share his enthusiasm and warmth of feeling. This cultivation of the intelligence is essential to the highest success even in daily drudgery, in politics, and in the commercial business of the world. No one is too dull, or too prosaic, or too much absorbed in the routine of "practical life," to be absolved from the care of his imaginative powers; and no one is likely to find that this care will not repay him even in a practical sense. It is the old alternative of "eyes and no eyes." He who thinks wisely, he who perceives quickly that which others do not see at all, is better equipped for any work than one whose mind works slowly and feebly, and whose apprehensions have grown rusty from disuse. Poetry is not for the few, but for the many, for all. The world's greatest poems, with few exceptions, have been poems whose meaning has been |