“ It trembles into death; yet comes anon
As thoughts of spring will come though summer's here.
O star prelusive to a dream more fair,
Within my heart I'll keep a heaven for thee
Where thou mayst freely come and freely go,
Touching with thy faint gold ere I am 'ware
A twilight hope — a dawn I did not see —
O love that is not Love, but nearly so!
Love's Ritual. [Charles Hanson Towne]
Breathe me the ancient words when I shall find
Your spirit mine; if, seeking you, life wins
New wonder, with old splendor let us bind
Our hearts when Love's high sacrament begins. ”

“ He had an ecstatic sense of the visible world. Beauty was his religion, and he spent his life learning the ways and moods of nature and declaring them in poetry rich in imagination. He had the naturalist's eagerness for truth, and one might explore the Kentucky woods and fields with a volume of his poetry as a handbook and find the least regarded flower minutely celebrated. In his most affluent fancy his eye never left the fact, and the accuracy of his observation gives his nature work a background which adds greatly to its value. ”

“ Be still. The Hanging Gardens were a dream. [Trumbull Stickney]
Be still. The Hanging Gardens were a dream
That over Persian roses flew to kiss
The curled lashes of Semiramis.
Troy never was, nor green Skamander stream.
Provence and Troubadour are merest lies,
The glorious hair of Venice was a beam
Made within Titian's eye. The sunsets seem,
The world is very old and nothing is. ”

“ And never comes darkness down, yet he greeteth a million morns.
He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of roaming;
All roads and the flowing of waves and the speediest flight he knows,
But wherever his feet are set, his soul is forever homing,
And going, he comes, and coming he heareth a call and goes.
He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of sorrow,
At death and the dropping of leaves and the fading of suns he smiles,
For a dream remembers no past and scorns the desire of a morrow,
And a dream in a sea of doom sets surely the ultimate isles. ”

“ My soul that's lost in Babylon.~"
Live blindly. [Trumbull Stickney]
Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,
Who was the Future, died full long ago.
Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go,
Poor child, and be not to thyself abhorred.
Around thine earth sun-winged winds do blow
And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword;
The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord
And the long strips of river-silver flow:
Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours.
Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight
About their fragile hairs' aerial gold. ”

“ Two swords there are: one naked, apt to smite,
Thy blade of war; and, battle-storied, one
Rejoices in the sheath, and hides from light.
American I am; would wars were done!
Now westward, look, my country bids good-night —
Peace to the world from ports without a gun!
Euchenor Chorus. [Arthur Upson]
(From "The City")
Of old it went forth to Euchenor, pronounced of his sire —
Reluctant, impelled by the god's unescapable fire —
To choose for his doom or to perish at home of disease
Or be slain of his foes, among men, where Troy surges down to the seas. ”

“ The mind conceived you, though the quenched mind
Goes down in dark where you in dawn ascend.
Our songs can but suspend
The ultimate silence: yet could song aspire
The realms of mortal music to extend
And wake a Sibyl's voice or Seraph's lyre —
How should it tell the dearness of a friend?
III The simplest is the inexpressible;
The heart of music still evades the Muse,
And arts of men the heart of man suffuse,
And saddest things are made of silence still. ”

“ Here the world's heaped gold is a pile of sand.
Let them weary and work in their narrow walls:
I ride with the voices of waterfalls!
I swing on as one in a dream — I swing
Down the airy hollows, I shout, I sing!
The world is gone like an empty word:
My body's a bough in the wind, my heart a bird! ”

“ The dust will hide the crown;
Ay, none shall nail so high his name
Time will not tear it down.
The happiest heart that ever beat
Was in some quiet breast
That found the common daylight sweet,
And left to Heaven the rest.
To a New York Shop-Girl dressed for Sunday. [Anna Hempstead Branch]
To-day I saw the shop-girl go
Down gay Broadway to meet her beau.
Conspicuous, splendid, conscious, sweet,
She spread abroad and took the street.
And all that niceness would forbid,
Superb, she smiled upon and did.
Let other girls, whose happier days
Preserve the perfume of their ways,
Go modestly. ”

“ The valor that wore out your soul in the service of man.
Sleep softly . . . eagle forgotten . . . under the stone.
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.
Sleep on, O brave-hearted, O wise man that kindled the flame —
To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name,
To live in mankind, far, far more than to live in a name! ”

“ Grandmither, gie me your clay-stopped ears, that I may never hear
My lad a-singin' in the night when I am sick wi' fear;
A-singin' when the moonlight over a' the land is white —
Ah, God! I'll up and go to him, a-singin' in the night,
A-callin' in the night.
Grandmither, gie me your clay-cold heart, that has forgot to ache,
For mine be fire wi'in my breast an' yet it cannot break.
Wi' every beat it's callin' for things that must not be, —
So can ye not let me creep in an' rest awhile by ye? ”

“ Of life-blood, stood Saint Paul, blazing a theme
Of living drama from a fiery scroll
Across his stretched vision as in dream —
When Death, with blind dark, blotted out the whole.
VII And yet not all: though darkly alien
Those uncompleted worlds of work to be
Are waned ”

“ The fragile dark, where multitudinous
The rhythmic, intermittent silence thrills,
Like song, the valleys. — "Hark!" he murmurs, "Thus
May bards from crickets learn their canticles!"
XIV Now Morning, not less lavish of her sweets,
Leads us along the woodpaths — in whose hush
The quivering alchemy of the pure thrush
Cools from above the balsam-dripping heats —
To find, in green retreats,
'Mid men of clay, the great, quick-hearted man
Whose subtle art our human age secretes,
Or him whose brush, tinct with cerulean,
Blooms with soft castle-towers and cloud-capped fleets. ”

“ The Greek influence, dominant in his work, reaches its finest expression in "The Fire-Bringer", a poetic drama of great beauty and philosophical depth. This drama is one of a trilogy of which it is the first member, the second being "The Masque of Judgment", and the third, "The Death of Eve". The last was in process of writing at Mr. Moody's death and only fragments of it have been published. This trilogy, profound in its spiritual meaning and artistic in execution, would alone be sufficient to place Moody among the major poets had he not left us a body of lyric poetry of equal distinction. ”

“ Of man for man in the mean populous streets of To-day!
Hand, with what color and power thou couldst show, in the ring hot-sanded,
Brown Bestiarius holding the lean tawn tiger at bay,
Paint me the wrestle of Toil with the wild-beast Want, bare-handed;
Shadow me forth a soul steadily facing To-day!
The Man with the Hoe. [Edwin Markham]
(Written after seeing Millet's world-famous painting)
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world. ”

“ And the man's club and the beast's claw be flails
To winnow the unworthy of the two.
Then on the earth, in the sky and the heavenly court
That broods behind it,
Justice shall be awakened and aware,
Then those who go forth greatly, seeking sport,
Shall doubtless find it,
And all things be fair. ”

“ He occupied a field unique in American literature and probably no poet came as near to the heart of the people. Popularly known as "The Hoosier Poet", because his verse was largely written in the dialect of the common people of his native State of Indiana, he was yet a poet of the truest gifts, and many of his dialect poems bid fair to become classic. Mr. Riley did not confine himself, however, to the use of dialect, but wrote some exquisite poetry in other fields. ”

“ For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead,
For all the fatal rhythm of their tread.
The land they died to save from death and shame
Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name,
And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred.
II Through street and mall the tides of people go
Heedless; the trees upon the Common show
No hint of green ”

“ Grandmither, gie me your still white hands that lie upon your breast,
For mine do beat the dark all night and never find me rest;
They grope among the shadows an' they beat the cold black air,
They go seekin' in the darkness, an' they never find him there,
They never find him there. ”

“ While at college she began writing poetry, and the year after her graduation won the first prize awarded by the "Century Magazine" for a poem written by a college graduate. This poem, "The Road 'Twixt Heaven and Hell", was printed in the "Century Magazine" for December, 1898, and was followed soon after by the publication of Miss Branch's first volume, "The Heart of the Road", 1901. She has since published two volumes, "The Shoes that Danced", 1902, and "Rose of the Wind", 1910, both marked by imagination and beauty of a high order. ”

“ During his boyhood he attended school but three months in the year, but later studied at San Jose Normal School and the University of California. His first books were earned, when a lad on the ranch, by ploughing a twenty-acre lot at a dollar an acre and investing the entire sum in the works of the great poets. Thereafter, when he rode the ranges, he balanced his saddle bags with Keats and Shelley. It was, indeed, largely due to the democracy of Shelley, coupled with his own early experiences, that his genius took the social bent which distinguishes it. ”

“ The symbolism of her poetry is frequently drawn from battle or from knight-errantry, as in "The Wild Ride", "The Kings", "The Vigil-at-Arms", "The Knight Errant", "Memorial Day", etc. Valor, transmuted to a spiritual quality, may, indeed, be said to be the keynote of Miss Guiney's work. Add to this a mystical element, best illustrated in her poem, "Beati Mortui", a Celtic note, shown so exquisitely in her "Irish Peasant Song", and one has the more obvious characteristics of poetry that, whatever its theme, is always distinguished and individual. ”

“ He studied also at Harvard and at the University of Edinburgh. Like most poets, Mr. Carman served his period in journalism, being office editor of "The Independent" from 1890 to 1892, and editor of "The Chap-Book" in 1894. He has, however, given almost his sole allegiance to poetry and has published many books, chiefly of nature, interspersed now and then with volumes dealing with myth or mysticism. His first volume was "Low Tide on Grand Pre", which appeared in 1893, and revealed at the outset his remarkable lyric gift and his sensitive feeling for nature. ”

“ Foreword
"The Little Book of Modern Verse", as its name implies, is not a formal anthology. The pageant of American poetry has been so often presented that no necessity exists for another exhaustive review of the art. Nearly all anthologies, however, stop short of the present group of poets, or represent them so inadequately that only those in close touch with the trend of American literature know what the poet of to-day is contributing to it. ”

“ I have attempted, as far as possible, to unify the collection by arranging the poems so that each should set the keynote to the next, or at least bear some relation to it in mood or theme. While it is impossible, with so varied a mass of material, that such a sequence should be exact, and in one or two instances the arrangement has been disturbed by the late addition or elimination of poems, the idea has been to differentiate the little volume from the typical anthology by giving it a unity impossible to a larger collection. ”

“ The silly sheep that graze to-day,
I wot, they let him go his way,
Nor once looked up, as who should say:
"It is a seemly man."
For many lads went wooing aye
Across the fields to Anne.
The oaks, they have a wiser look;
Mayhap they whispered to the brook:
"The world by him shall yet be shook,
It is in nature's plan ”

“ Educated at Harvard University and the University of Paris. He did his first work in poetry at Harvard in the stimulating companionship of a little group of poets including Trumbull Stickney, William Vaughn Moody, and Philip Henry Savage, all of whom, by a strange fatality, died within a few years after leaving the University. Mr. Lodge was a poet whose gift followed classical lines, but was none the less individual and sincere. His complete work in lyric and dramatic poetry has been gathered into two volumes: "Poems and Dramas", 1911. He died at Boston in 1909. ”

“ That I shall see no more.
"Grandmither, think not I forget". [Willa Sibert Cather]
Grandmither, think not I forget, when I come back to town,
An' wander the old ways again, an' tread them up and down.
I never smell the clover bloom, nor see the swallows pass,
Wi'out I mind how good ye were unto a little lass;
I never hear the winter rain a-pelting all night through
Wi'out I think and mind me of how cold it falls on you. ”