Transferred to NOTICE OF COPYRIGHTS. I. American pieces in this volume within the legal protection of copyright are used by the courteous permission of the owners, either the publishers named in the following list or the authors or their representatives in the subsequent one,— who reserve all their rights. So far as practicable, permission has been secured also for poems out of copyright. 1904. PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY. Messrs. D. APPLETON & Co., New York.-W. C. Bryant: "The Hurricane." Messrs. DODD, MEAD & Co., New York.-W. H. Venable: "A Welcome to Boz." Messrs. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co., Boston.-T. B. Aldrich: "Guilielmus Rex," "Tennyson:" Bret Harte: "Dickens in Camp" 0. W. Holmes: "Daniel Webster; Emma Lazarus: "Chopin;" H. W. Longfellow: "Carillon," "Hawthorne," "The Old Bridge at Florence," "The Skeleton in Armor" J. R. Lowell: "Abraham Lincoln," "To H. W. Longfellow," ""On a Copy of Omar Khayyám," On Himself," "Washington," "Wm. L. Garrison; " T. W. Parsons: "On a Buste of Dante;" Harriet W. Preston: "Ballad of Guibour; Edna D. Proctor: "The Brooklyn Bridge:" J. J. Roche: "Fight of the Armstrong' Privateer;" E. C. Stedman: "Cousin Lucrece," "The Hand of Lincoln," "Hawthorne" Harriet B. Stowe: "A Day in the Pamfili Doria; " J. G. Whittier: Barclay of Ury," "Burns," "Fitz-Greene Halleck," Prayer of Agassiz;" Sarah C. Woolsey: "Emer son." Mr. JOHN LANE, New York.-W. Watson: sarum;" From "Wordsworth's Grave." Lachrymæ Mu The J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, Philadelphia,-G. H. Boker: "Prince Adeb;" T. B. Read: "Drifting." Messrs. LITTLE, BROWN & Co., Boston.-Louise C. Moulton: "Laus Veneris." The RUDDER PUBLISHING COMPANY, New York.-T. F. Day: "The Coasters." Messrs. SMALL, MAYNARD & Co., Boston.-Evaleen Stein: "In Mexico." The SUCCESS COMPANY, also The BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY, New York, in a volume entitled How to get the Best out of Books."-R. Le Gallienne: "What's the Use of Poetry ?" II. American poems in this volume by the authors whose names are given below are the copyrighted property of the authors, or of their representatives named in parenthesis, and may not be reprinted without their permission, which for the present work has been courteously granted. 1904. PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY. M. B. Benton (Joel Benton); J. H. Boner (Mrs. L. A. Boner); C. T. Brooks (Mrs. Harriet Lyman Brooks); P. L. Dunbar; R. W. Gilder; C. H. Phelps; Harriet W. Preston; Sarah H. P. Whitman (Miss C. F. Dailey, Mrs. H. P. Chace); W. Whitman (H. Traubel, Literary Executor). 66 WHAT 'S THE USE OF POETRY?" BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. "And idly tuneful, the loquacious throng Flutter and twitter, prodigal of time, And little masters make a toy of song Till grave men weary of the sound of rhyme." THERE is no doubt that many-one might almost say most-people are firmly convinced that they do not care for poetry. They have no use for it, they tell you. Either it bores them, as a fantastic, highflown method of saying something that, to their way of thinking, could be better said in plain prose, or they look upon it as the sentimental nonsense of the moonstruck and lovesick young, a kind of intellectual "candy" all very well for women and children, but of no value to grown men with the serious work of the world on their shoulders. It is not at all difficult to account for, and, indeed, to sympathize with, this attitude. To begin with, of course, there is a large class outside our present consideration which does not care for poetry, simply because it does not care for any literature whatsoever. Serious reading of any kind does not enter into its scheme of life. Beyond the newspapers and magazines and an occasional novel of the hour, idly taken up and indifferently put aside, it has no literary needs. With this listless multitude we have not to concern ourselves, but rather with that sufficiently heterogeneous body known as the reading public, the people for whom Mr. Carnegie builds libraries, and the publishers display their wares. Of course, among these there must necessarily be a considerable percentage temperamentally unappreciative of poetry,-just as there are numbers of people born with no ear for music, and numbers, again, born with no color-sense. The lover of poetry is no less born than the poet himself. Yet, as the poet is made as well as born, so is his reader; and there are many who really love poetry without knowing it, but who think they do not care for it, either because they have contracted a wrong notion of what poetry is, or because they have some time or other made a bad start with the wrong kind. I am convinced that one widespread provocative of the prevailing impression of the foolishness of poetry is the mediocre magazine verse of the day. In an age when we go so much to the magazines for our reading, we may rely on finding there the best work being done in every branch of literature except-the highest. The best novelists, the best historians, and the best essayists write for the magazines; but the best poets must be looked for in their high-priced volumes, and a magazine reader must rely for his verse on lady amateurs and tuneful college boys. Thus he too |