defiance,
the fierceness of battle and the serenity of peace. While through all
and over all must breathe the informing spirit of Beauty--whether
of the delicate or the sublime, whether of sweetness or of
power--harmonizing both the interior essence and its outward
expression.

In the ejaculations of delight, fear, or wonder of primitive man at
the phenomena of nature--in his imaginative efforts to explain the
mystery of power behind light, darkness, the seasons, storm, calm--lie
the beginnings of poetry; and religion grows from the same seed--the
desire of the finite to lay hold on the Infinite. Every man is a
potential poet, just so far as he responds to these yearnings after
some expression of the ideal and the ineffable.

Poetry, indeed, finds its inspiration in all things, from the humblest
creation to the Creator himself,--nothing too low or too high for its
interest. In turn, it has inspired humanity's finest deeds; and so
long as humanity's aims and joys and woes persist, will mankind seek
uplift and delight in its charm.

[Signature: JR Howard]

PREFACE

The Poets, by the very necessity of their vocation, are the closest
students of language in any literature. They are the most exacting
in their demands upon the resources of words, and the most careful
of discriminations in their use. "Easy writing's curst hard reading,"
said an English wit; but for the poet there is no such thing as easy
writing. He must "wreak thought upon expression." The veteran Bryant
wrote:

"Thou who wouldst wear the name
Of Poet midst thy brethren of mankind,
And clothe in words of flame
Thoughts that shall live within the general mind,
Deem not the framing of a deathless lay
The pastime of a drowsy summer day.
But gather all thy powers," etc.

The prose-writer should, and the great one does, carefully weigh,
select, and place his words; but the Poet must,--if he is to make
any least claim to the title. Therefore poetical quotations are, as
a rule, more skillfully apt to the purpose of expressing shades of
thought than are the more natural and therefore usually less careful
phrases of prose, even when conveying "thoughts that shall live within
the general mind."

A gathering of poetical quotations is valuable in two ways. It may
afford the most vivid and significant representation of a thought or
feeling for some specific occasion, or it will open to the reader
an alluring field for wandering at wi