178 How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, What is he Buzzing in my Ears ? Robert Browning. 195 One Word is too often profaned, Believe me, if all those endearing, When Stars are in the quiet Sky, Edward Bulwer Lytton. 194 195 210 211 212 High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire, Jean Ingelow. The Destruction of Sennacherib, . A wet Sheet and a flowing Sea, . Allan Cunningham. If all were Rain and never Sun, Christina G. Rossetti. (Translated from the French of Gus:ave Laigley Lane, . 339 371 377 Robert Buchanin. De Massa ob de Sheepfol', . Sally P. McLean Greene. The Last Rose of Summer, Thomas Moore. The Last Leaf, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Good-Night, Babette, Austin Dobson. 379 382 383 384 386 PREFACE. So many and such excellent collections of favorite poems have already been made that this volume contains but few poems that are not in some other collection. A new collection is, to a certain extent, but a turn of the kaleidoscope, a rearranging of the poems that live, not because they are collected, but which are collected because they live. So far, then, as it concerns the poems of the past, this volume is largely collected from collections. Time tries and sifts, and its verdict is clear and pronounced on the many poems to be found in all anthologies. Concerning the poems of to-day, an attempt has been made to include a few which seem to have a present and deserved popularity. To keep such a volume within the bounds of easy handling and reading is certainly to exclude a great deal of popular verse. The principle of selection cannot be easily defined, but it has been, perhaps, an attempt to include those poems which the majority of intelligent people would care for most, which touch some popular chord, which are most likely to be cut out for the scrapbook. The thanks of the editor are due to The Century |