POETRY AND PROSE FOR SCHOOL-DAYS. EDITED BY BLANCHE WILDER BELLAMY AND MAUD WILDER GOODWIN. Volume FF. ARRANGED FOR STUDENTS OVER FOURTEEN BOSTON, U.S.A.: PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY. PREFACE. THE third volume of "OPEN SESAME: Poetry and Prose for School-days" completes the series, and represents many phases of literature, dramatic and narrative, epic and lyric, political and domestic. Among the selections are many of the recognized masterpieces of the language; - Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality," called by Emerson "the highwater mark which the intellect of the age has reached"; "The Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni," which Coleridge admired so much as to appropriate and Anglicize it from the work of a German girl, and "Kubla Khan," his own dream; Blanco White's "Sonnet to Night," dear to Wordsworth's heart, and called by Coleridge the greatest sonnet in the English language; many specimens of Shakespeare and Milton, and fragments from Spenser, "the poet's poet." Other selections have a secondary interest, like the "Lost Leader," of Browning, which, rumor says, hints at Wordsworth as a traitor to the Liberal cause; or the humorous-pathetic words of Jane Welsh Carlyle, which give a picture of genius at home, behind the doors of Craigenputtock; while boys will be interested to find the work of others young like themselves,— V |