“ As still as a brooding dove.
That orbèd maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
[Pg 30] Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these. ”

“ Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold, November rain,
Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again.
The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the brier-rose and the orchids died amid the summer glow;
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen. ”

“ Of that silver sphere
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel, that it is there.
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd.
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:—
Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not ”

“ How charming Drayton's description of the summer breeze:
"The wind had no more strength than this,
That leisurely it blew,
To make one leaf the next to kiss
That closely by it grew."
If the day is dreary you need only read Lowell's "June Weather," and like the bird sitting at his door in the sun, atilt like a blossom among the leaves, your "illumined being" will overrun with the "deluge of summer it receives."
Then turn the page; the picture fades as you read Trowbridge's "Midwinter." The speckled sky is dim; the light flakes falter and fall slow; the chickadee sings cheerily ”

“ No listening, no longing, shall aught, aught discover;
You leave the story to me.
The foxglove shoots out of the green matted heather,
And hangeth her hoods of snow;
She was idle, and slept till the sunshiny weather:
Oh, children take long to grow!
I wish and I wish that the spring would go faster,
Nor long summer bide so late;
And I could grow on like the foxglove and aster,
For some things are ill to wait.
I wait for the day when dear hearts shall discover,
While dear hands are laid on my head,
"The child is a woman—the book may close over,
For all the lessons are said." ”

“ Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest;
We plant, upon the sunny lea,
A shadow for the noontide hour,
A shelter from the summer shower,
When we plant the apple tree.
What plant we in this apple tree?
Sweets for a hundred flowery springs
To load the May wind's restless wings,
When, from the orchard row, he pours
Its fragrance through our open doors;
A world of blossoms for the bee,
Flowers for the sick girl's silent room,
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,
We plant with the apple tree.
What plant we in this apple tree? ”

“ Edmund Spenser.
When Icicles Hang by the Wall
When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit!
To-who!—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
[Pg 20]
When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit! ”

“ The snow in the street and the wind on the door.
We come to bear you goodly wine,
Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.
From far away we come to you,
The snow in the street and the wind on the door.
To tell of great tidings strange and true,
Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.
News, news of the Trinity,
The snow in the street and the wind on the door.
And Mary and Joseph from over the sea!
Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.
For as we wandered far and wide,
The snow in the street and the wind on the door. ”

“ There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land;
And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand:
And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood,
And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood;
And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war,
To fight for His own holy name, and Henry of Navarre.
The King is come to marshal us, in all his armor drest;
And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest. ”

“ Here is the Year's Processional in verse; the story of her hours, her days, her seasons, told as only poets can, because they see and hear things not revealed to you and me, and are able by their magic to make us sharers in the revelation. Read the first six poems and ask yourself whether you have ever realized the glories of the common day; from the moment when morning from her orient chambers comes, and the lark at heaven's gate sings, to the hour when the moon, unveiling her peerless light, throws her silver mantle o'er the dark, and the firmament glows with living sapphires. ”

“ The Scotsman's heart is in the Highlands, the birthplace of valor, the country of worth; the English warrior boasts of his country:
"And o'er one-sixth of all the earth, and over all the main,
Like some good Fairy, Freedom marks and blesses her domain;"
the Irish Minstrel-boy tears the chords of his faithful harp asunder lest they sound in the service of the foe, while the quick, alarming Yankee drum in Bret Harte's "Reveille" calls upon each freeman to defend the land of the pilgrim's pride, land where his fathers died. ”

“ You are not obliged to love an impersonal, remote, or complex poem intimately and passionately, but read it faithfully if you do not wish to be wholly blind and deaf to beauties of sense or sound that happier people see and hear. Joubert says most truly: "You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with you," but there are some splendid things in verse as in prose that you stand in too great awe of to love in any real, childlike way. It is never scenes from Paradise Lost that run through your mind when you are going to sleep. ”

“ That ever buckled sword;
This the most gifted poet
That ever breathed a word.
And never earth's philosopher
Traced with his golden pen
On the deathless page truths half so sage
As he wrote down for men.
And had he not high honour,
The hill-side for a pall,
To lie in state, while angels wait
With stars for tapers tall,
And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes,
Over his bier to wave,
And God's own hand in that lonely land
To lay him in the grave.
[Pg 507]
In that strange grave without a name,
Whence his uncoffin'd clay
Shall break again, O wondrous thought! ”

“ No one need be ashamed of liking a good deal of rhyme and rhythm, swing and movement and melody in poetry; absolute perfection of form, though all too rarely attained, is one of the chief delights of the verse-lover. "The procession of beautiful sounds that is a poem," says Walter Raleigh. It is quite natural to love the music of verse before you catch the deeper thought, and you feel, in some of the greatest poetry, as if only the angels could have put the melodious words together. ”

“ II THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL The World Beautiful
Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the Sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glistening with dew; fragrant the fertile Earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful Evening mild; then silent Night
With this her solemn bird, and this fair Moon,
And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train.
John Milton.
From "Paradise Lost."
The Harvest Moon
It is the harvest moon! ”

“ We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
[Pg 79] Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.
Robert Herrick.
The Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,—
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. ”

“ We have quoted you poems from the grand old masters, those "bards sublime,"
"Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time,"
and many a verse:—
—"from some humbler poet
Whose songs gushed from his heart
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Who through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies."
Since you will not like everything in the book equally well, may we advise you how to use it? First find something you know and love, and read it over again. ”

“ A Saviour there is born more old than years,
Amidst heaven's rolling height this earth who stayed.
In a poor cottage inned, a virgin maid,
A weakling did him bear, who all upbears;
There is he poorly swaddled, in manger laid,
To whom too narrow swaddlings are our spheres:
Run, shepherds, run, and solemnize his birth.
This is that night—no, day, grown great with bliss,
In which the power of Satan broken is:
In heaven be glory, peace unto the earth!
[Pg 637] Thus singing, through the air the angels swam,
And cope of stars re-echoèd the same. ”

“ For the soul's love of home than this?
Oh yes! his fatherland must be
As the blue heaven wide and free!
Where'er a human heart doth wear
Joy's myrtle-wreath or sorrow's gyves,
Where'er a human spirit strives
After a life more true and fair,
There is the true man's birthplace grand,
His is a world-wide fatherland!
Where'er a single slave doth pine,
Where'er one man may help another,—
Thank God for such a birthright, brother,—
That spot of earth is thine and mine!
There is the true man's birthplace grand,
His is a world-wide fatherland!
James Russell Lowell. ”

“ It is naught but an old folk-tale, but it has truth hidden at its heart, for a strange, subtle force, a spirit of genial good-will, a new-born kindness, seem to animate child and man alike when the world pays its tribute to the "heaven-sent youngling," as the poet Drummond calls the infant Christ.
When the Three Wise Men rode from the East into the West on that "first, best Christmas night," they bore on their saddle-bows three caskets filled with gold and frankincense and myrrh, to be laid at the feet of the manger-cradled babe of Bethlehem. ”

“ A little later on you will have the same feeling of admiration and awe for Shelley's Skylark, Emerson's Snow Storm, Wordsworth's Daffodils, Keats's Daybreak, and for many another poem not included in this book, to which you must hope to grow. For it is a matter of growth after all, and growth, in mind and spirit, as in body, is largely a matter of will. It is all ours, the beauty in the world: your task is merely to enter into possession. Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare are yours as much as another's. ”

“ And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcomed to life the ocean-child!
I've lived since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers, a sailor's life,
With wealth to spend, and power to range,
But never have sought nor sighed for change;
And Death, whenever he comes to me,
Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea!
Barry Cornwall.
(Bryan Waller Procter.)
A Sea-Song
A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
A wind that follows fast,
And fills the white and rustling sail
And bends the gallant mast ”

“ Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
Edgar Allan Poe.
The Bells
I
Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
[Pg 190] In the icy air of night! ”