Replacing 213260.

COPYRIGHT

A. C. MCCLURG & Co.

1910

Published, March, 1911

THE PLIMPTON PRESS

[W.D.O]

NORWOOD MASS U S.A

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

THE publishers and compilers are glad to acknowledge their obligations to Mr. Franklin P. Adams; to Mr. George Ade, for a football ballad written while he was in college; to Mr. Irving Bacheller, for the "Ballad of the Sabre Cross and 7," from "In Various Moods," copyrighted, 1910; to Miss Katherine Lee Bates; to Mr. Christopher Bannister; to Mr. James Barnes; to Mr. L. Frank Baum and Messrs. the Reilly & Britton Company; to Mr. Charles G. Blanden; to Mr. Louis James Block; to Mr. George E. Bowen; to Mrs. Grace Duffie Boylan; to Mr. Thomas H. Briggs, Jr.; to Doctor Almon Brooks, for the poems of the late Francis Brooks; to Doctor Richard Burton; to Mr. Charles J. Buell; to Mr. Bliss Carman; to Mrs. Willa Sibert Cather and the Gorham Press, Boston, for "Asphodels" and "L'Envoi"; to Mr. Madison Cawein; to Mr. John Vance Cheney and Messrs. the Houghton Mifflin Company, for "San Francisco" and "The Man with a Hoe: A Reply"; to Mr. William Hamilton Cline and Messrs. the Franklin Hudson Publishing Company, for "The Glory of the Game," from "In Varying Moods"; to Mr. D. A. Clippinger and the Chicago Madrigal Club, for "I Know the Way of the Wild Blush Rose," by Mr. Willard E. Keyes; to Mr. Edmund Vance Cooke and Puck, for "The Third Person"; to Mr. Charles H. Crandall and Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, for "The Cinder Path" and "The Call of the Stream," from "Wayside Music"; to Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Company, for "Angelina" and 'Discovered," by the late Paul Laurence Dunbar; to Miss Caroline Duer and Messrs. P. F. Collier's Sons, for "An International Episode"; to Doctor Charles S. Eldredge; to Mr. Horace Spencer Fiske; to Mr. Elliott Flower; to Messrs. Forbes & Company, for verses by the late Ben King; to Mr. Sam Walter Foss and Messrs. the Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company, for "When a Man's Out of a Job"; to Miss Evelyn Gail Gardiner; to Miss Beatrice Hanscom and Messrs. the Frederick A. Stokes Company, for "Procrustes' Bed," from "Love, Laurels, and Laughter"; to Miss Frances Viola Holden; to Mr. John Jarvis Holden; to Messrs. the Houghton Mifflin Company, for "The Kearsarge," by the late James Jeffrey Roche; to the late Mary H. Hull; to Mr. Henry M. Hyde; to Mr. Charles James; to Miss Amanda T. Jones; to Mr. William F. Kirk; to Mr. Samuel Ellsworth Kiser; to Mr. Gustav Kobbé

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and the New York Herald, for "Homeward"; to Mr. Louis Albert Lamb; to Mr. Walter Learned; to Mr. John McGovern; to Mr. Alexander Maclean; to Mr. Oliver Marble; to Miss Angela Morgan; to Mr. Allan Munier and the Atlantic Monthly, for "Beyond"; to Mr. Richard Kendall Munkittrick; to Mr. Wilbur Dick Nesbit; to Mr. John Myers O'Hara; to Mr. Warren Pease; to Mr. Harry Thurston Peck, for "Heliotrope" and "Evolution," copyrighted 1905 and 1910; to Mr. William A. Phelon and the Chicago Journal, for "Paul Jones's Last Voyage"; to Mr. Frank Putnam; to Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese and Messrs. the Houghton Mifflin Company, for "Death's Guerdon" and "A Song"; to Mrs. Georgiana Rice; to Mr. Robert Cameron Rogers and Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, for "Love's Cup," from "For the King, and Other Poems"; to Mr. Ray Clarke Rose; to Mr. Charles Edward Russell; to Mr. Edwin I. Sabin and Messrs. the Century Company, for "Mothers" and "The Poor Man's Automobile"; to Mrs. Margaret Elizabeth Sangster and Messrs. P. F. Collier's Sons, for "The Absent Boy"; to Mr. Clinton Scollard; to Mr. William Shattuck; to Mr. Ray D. Smith; to Mrs. Helen Ekin Sterrett, for the verses by the late Frances Ekin Allison; to Mr. Herbert Stuart Stone, for an inclusive permission to use verses from The Chap Book; to Mr. Ivan Swift; to Mr. Bert Leston Taylor; to Mrs. Caroline Twyman, for the verses of the late Joseph Twyman; to Clarence Urmy and Messrs. the Frank A. Munsey Company, for "The Judgment Book"; to Mr. Ernest L. Valentine; to Mr. Culver Van Slycke; to Mrs. Ellen Rolfe Veblen; to Mr. Nixon Waterman and Messrs. Forbes & Company, for "The Man in the Cab"; to Mr. William Wallace Whitelock and Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Company, for "There Were Giants in Those Days," from "When the Heart is Young"; to Miss Florence Wilkinson and Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Company, for "Boys and Girls," from "Kings and Queens"; to Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Messrs. the W. B. Conkey Company, for "True Charity," from "Poems of Power"; to Mr. Edward Winship; to Mr. Edward Ryan Woodle; to Mr. Clement V. Zane; and to the many more whose work, anonymous and other, has been taken from the columns of the daily newspapers through a series of many years, with all thanks for such verses, which have finally made this collection possible.

INTRODUCTION

WHEN Longfellow wrote "The Day is Done" in 1844, with the line of advice, "Read from some humbler poet," from which the title of this volume and its predecessor is derived, he left the meaning of the phrase quite clear in one respect: just before he says, specifically, that in so reading one is not to seek his consolation "from the grand old masters, not from the bards sublime." So far, then, he evidently intends to include among the humbler poets all who do not fall within the select and august company designated, yet are indeed true poets within their smaller and nearer field.

During the compilation of this volume many were asked exactly what the phrase signifies to them, and however various the answers, they are not irreconcilable with one another. To one, the humbler poet is he whose work is generally disregarded by the public. To a second, it signifies the writer of fugitive verse. To a third, he who writes occasionally, without being a professed poet, either in his own estimation or that of others. A fourth takes it to mean the newspaper versifier, from him who fills the "Poet's Corner" in the rural weekly to the almost preposterously versatile person attached to the staff of a daily metropolitan journal. Still a fifth identifies, as Longfellow does, the word "humbler" with "minor." And Mr. Slason Thompson, in his explanatory note to the First Series of "The Humbler Poets," appears to cut the knot by making the demarcation "almost arbitrarily along the line of the collected works of the 'Lesser Poets."" In