THE MELODY OF EARTH

AN ANTHOLOGY
OF GARDEN AND NATURE POEMS
FROM PRESENT-DAY POETS

SELECTED
AND ARRANGED BY

MRS. WALDO RICHARDS

FOREWORD

How many of us are conscious of the subtle melodies, "through which the myriad lispings of the earth find perfect speech"?

Our poets are listeners; their ears are tuned to the magic call of secret voices that we who are not singers may never hear. They capture the "Melody" in chalices of song, and their message is: that whosoever will bend his ear to earth, may hear from field and furrow, from the many-bladed grass and the soft-petalled flowers—in the soughing of the pine tree or the rustle of leaves—an immortal music that revivifies the soul.

In the quiet tilled spots of earth, from time immemorial, men have sown rare seeds of poetic thought that have flowered into song. Amiel wrote in his Journal: "All seed-sowing is a mysterious thing whether the seed fall into earth or into souls; man is a husbandman, and his work rightly understood is to develop life, to sow it everywhere." The poets are our seed-sowers, and their work is to develop life and to enrich it. They are never happier than when writing about gardens and the growing things of earth—at once their symbol and their solace. In turn gardens have in the poets their happiest interpreters.

Here I have culled and gathered together songs and poems that reflect the melody and harmony of Nature's forces. In these days of the world's travail, let us seek inspiration and content within the delightful confines of these Gardens of Poetry.

March, 1918

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Mrs. Richards tenders her sincere thanks to the publishers and poets who have so generously accorded their permission to use copyrighted poems:

To the American Tract Society for "Seeds" and "The Philosopher's Garden," John Oxenham, from Bees in Amber.

To Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. for "The Mocking-Bird," Frank L. Stanton, from Songs of the Soil.

To the Baker & Taylor Co. for "June Rapture" and "The Rose," Angela Morgan, from The Hour has Struck, and Other Poems and Utterance, and Other Poems.

To The Biddle Press for "The Old-fashioned Garden" and "Poppies," John Russell Hayes, from Collected Poems.

To the Bobbs-Merrill Company for "Thoughts fer the Discuraged Farmer," James Whitcomb Riley, from Complete Works.

To Edmund A. Brooks, Minneapolis, for "Daffodils" and "From a Car-Window," Ruth Guthrie Harding, from The Lark went Singing, and Other Poems.

To Messrs. Burns & Oates and to Alice Meynell (Mrs. Wilfrid Meynell) for "To a Daisy" and "The Garden" from Collected Poems; for "Rosa Mystica," Katharine Tynan (Mrs. Henry Albert Hinkson), from The Flower of Peace.

To The Century Co. for "Larkspur," James Oppenheim, from War and Laughter; for "The Tilling," Cale Young Rice, from Trails Sunward; for "The Haunted Garden," Louis Untermeyer, from Challenge.

To Messrs. Constable & Co. for "For These," Edward Thomas (Edward Eastaway), from An Annual of New Poetry.

To Country Life (London) and to Mrs. Gurney personally for "The Lord God planted a Garden" and "A Garden in Venice," by Dorothy Frances Gurney, from Poems.

To Messrs. Thomas Y. Crowell Company for "Love planted a Rose," Katharine Lee Bates, from America, and Other Poems; for "An Exile's Garden," Sophie Jewett, from Collected Poems.

To Messrs. J. M. Dent & Sons for "The Spring Beauties," Helen Gray Cone, from The Chant of Love, and Other Poems.

To Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Co. for "In a Garden," Livingston L. Biddle, from The Understanding Hills.

To Messrs. George H. Doran Company for "The Cricket in the Path," "Herb of Grace," and "Rain in the Night," Amelia Josephine Burr, from In Deep Places and Life and Living; for "A Song in a Garden," "Shade," and "The Poplars," Theodosia Garrison, from The Dreamers, and Other Poems; for "Trees," Joyce Kilmer, from Trees, and Other Poems; for "June," Douglas Malloch, from The Woods; for "Where Love is Life," Duncan Campbell Scott, from "The Three Songs" in Lundy's Lane, and Other Poems.

To Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co. for "A Prayer," "The Butterfly," and "Before Mary of Magdala came," Edwin Markham, from The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems and The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems.

To Messrs. Duffield & Co. for "The sweet caresses that I gave to you," Elsa Barker, from The Book of Love; for "What heart but fears a fragrance?" ("Zauber Duft"), Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi, from Gabrielle, and Other Poems; for "Spring," Francis Ledwidge, from Songs of the Fields; for "The White Peacock," William Sharp, from Songs and Poems.

To Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Co. for "The South Wind," Siegfried Sassoon, from The Old Huntsman, and Other Poems; for "The Tree," Evelyn Underhill, from Theophanies.

To Messrs. H. W. Fisher & Co. for "A Dream," "The Autumn Rose," "Fireflies," and "An Evening in Old Japan," Antoinette De Coursey Patterson, from Sonnets and Quatrains and The Son of Merope, and Other Poems.

To Messrs. Harper & Brothers for "Roses in the Subway," Dana Burnet, from Poems; for "The Wild Rose," and "If I were a Fairy," Charles Buxton Going, from Star-Glow and Song; for "The Cardinal-Bird," Arthur Guiterman, from The Laughing Muse; for "Wild Gardens," Ada Foster Murray, from Flowers of the Grass; for "The Message," Helen Hay Whitney, from Sonnets and Songs.

To Hearst's International Library Company for "Stairways and Gardens" and "My Flower-Room," Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from World Voices.

To Mr. William Heinemann for "The Cactus," Laurence Hope, from Stars of the Desert; for "The July Garden," R. E. Vernède, from War Poems, and Other Verses; for "A Garden-Piece," Edmund Gosse, from Collected Poems.

To Messrs. Henry Holt & Co. for "The Cloister Garden at Certosa," Richard Burton, from Poems of Earth's Meaning; for "The Furrow," Padraic Colum, from Wild Earth, and Other Poems; for "The Three Cherry Trees," Walter de la Mare, from The Listeners, and Other Poems; for "A Late Walk," "Asking for Roses," "The Pasture," and "Putting in the Seed," Robert Frost, from A Boy's Will, North of Boston, and A Mountain Interval; for "Joe-Pyeweed," Louis Untermeyer, from These Times.

To Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company for "The Blooming of the Rose" and the selection from "Under the Trees," Anna Hempstead Branch, from The Heart of the Road and The Shoes that Danced, and Other Poems; for "Spring Patchwork" and "The Flowerphone," Abbie Farwell Brown, from A Pocketful of Posies and Songs of Sixpence; for "The Morning-Glory" and "Jewel-Weed," Florence Earle Coates, from Collected Poems; for "Nightingales" and "A Breath of