Byron, Lord: Oh! Snatch'd Away in Beauty's Bloom 395 395 Lowell, James Russell: Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration (in part) 404 Robinson, Edwin Arlington: The Master 406 Lindsay, Vachel: Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight 409 Poe, Edgar Allan: Sonnet To Science (in part) Hardy, Thomas: In a Wood Kilmer, Joyce: Trees Wheelock, John Hall: Earth Byron, Lord: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (in part) Browning, Robert: Up at a Villa-Down in the City Sandburg, Carl: Chicago Whitman, Walt: To a Locomotive in Winter 410 412 412 413 414 416 417 418 420 422 423 426 427 428 429 432 433 436 437 440 442 443 449 Dunsany, Lord: The Prayer of the Flowers XII. THE CONTEMPORARY POETS Yeats, William Butler: When You Are Old and Gray 451 455 456 458 459 . 461 Robinson, Edwin Arlington: The Dark Hills Robinson, Edwin Arlington: Monadnock Through the PAGE 462 463 464 Masters, Edgar Lee: George Gray 466 Masters, Edgar Lee: John Hancock Otis 467 Tagore, Rabindranath: A Prayer for India 469 Mordaunt, Major Thomas O.: Sound, Sound the 471 Kipling, Rudyard: Recessional Seeger, Alan: I Have a Rendezvous with Death INTRODUCTION TO POETRY CHAPTER I THE STUDY OF POETRY The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer; Is dead; the birds depart, the groves decay: Captains and conquerors leave a little dust, William Watson: "Lachrimæ Musarum” "THE future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay." We can think of no better way of beginning a poetic anthology than by quoting this opening sentence of Matthew Arnold's Introduction to Ward's English Poets. These words are as true today as they were half a century ago when they were written. For "Poetry," as Wordsworth said, “is as immortal as the heart of man." If poetry is not immortal, it is at any rate more nearly so than anything else made by man. No one, in fine, can afford to remain indifferent to this great and imperishable possession of the race. 1 We are, however, living in a rapidly changing age which has little patience with anything belonging to the past. Old ideas, old conventions, old standards seem to be passing away. Although, strangely enough, no one suggests that poetry is something we have outgrown, there are nevertheless many who assert that we have outgrown much of the poetry which preceding generations thought great. This is natural and inevitable, and no one need regret it. We do not look for exactly the same things in poetry that our Victorian grandparents sought, for our view of life is different from theirs. Each age must give its own answer to the recurring question, Why read poetry? Although the answer which we give today is not essentially different from that given long ago by Aristotle or by Sir Philip Sidney, it is indispensable that we answer the question for ourselves, even though we may merely translate into modern terms what older apologists have said. Throughout this chapter and, to a less degree, throughout the entire book, we shall quote extensively from what the poets themselves have had to say about their aims and methods. The best interpreter is the poet himself, particularly if he be, like Arnold, Coleridge, Poe, or Amy Lowell, a gifted critic as well. Many are the motives which induce men to read books. In the preface to his novel, Pierre et Jean, Guy de Maupassant wrote: "The public is composed of numerous groups who say to us [writers]: 'Console me,―amuse me,—make me sad,-make me sentimental,—make me dream,—make me laugh,—make me tremble,—make me weep,—make me think.' But there are some chosen spirits |