The Melody of Earth.

by Various.

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 gra.s.s 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.

GERTRUDE MOORE RICHARDS

_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 G.o.d 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 b.u.t.terfly," 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 d.i.c.kinson Bianchi, from _Gabrielle, and Other Poems_; for "Spring," Francis Ledwidge, from _Songs of the Fields_; for "The White Peac.o.c.k," William Sharp, from _Songs and Poems_.

To Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Co. for "The South Wind," Siegfried Sa.s.soon, 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 j.a.pan," 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 Gra.s.s_; 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 Wilc.o.x, from _World Voices_.

To Mr. William Heinemann for "The Cactus," Laurence Hope, from _Stars of the Desert_; for "The July Garden," R. E. Vernede, 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 Mint," Grace Hazard Conkling, from _Afternoons of April_; for "The Golden-Rod," Margaret Deland, from _The Old Garden, and Other Verses_; for "A Roman Garden," Florence Wilkinson Evans, from _The Ride Home_; for "Cobwebs," Louise Imogen Guiney, from _Happy Ending_; for "Planting," Robert Livingston, from _Murrer and Me_; for "Primavera," George Cabot Lodge, from _Poems and Dramas_; for "Ever the Same," "Charm: To be said in the Sun," and "But we did walk in Eden," Josephine Preston Peabody, from _The Singing Leaves_ and _The Singing Man_; for "At Isola Bella" ("A White Peac.o.c.k"), Jessie B.

Rittenhouse, from _The Door of Dreams_; for "The Goldfinch," Odell Shepard, from _A Lonely Flute_; for "Daisies" and "Witchery," Frank Dempster Sherman, from _Poems_; for "Grandmother's Gathering Boneset,"

Edith M. Thomas, from _In Sunshine Land_.

To Mr. B. W. Huebsch for "Song from 'April,'" Irene Rutherford McLeod, from _Songs to Save a Soul_.

To Messrs. George W. Jacobs & Co. for "Vestured and veiled with twilight," Rosamund Marriott Watson, from _The Heart of a Garden_.

To Mr. R. U. Johnson (publisher) for "Como in April," Robert Underwood Johnson, from _Collected Poems_.

To Mr. Mitch.e.l.l Kennerley for "A Song to Belinda," Theodosia Garrison, from _Earth Cry_; for "In a Garden," Horace Holley, from _Divinations and Creations_; for "Afternoon on a Hill," "The End of Summer," and "A Little Ghost," Edna St. Vincent Millay, from _Renascence, and Other Poems_; for "Welcome," John Curtis Underwood, from _Processionals_; for "aere Perennius," Charles Hanson Towne, from _A Quiet Singer_.

To Mr. Alfred A. Knopf for "The Rain" and "The Ways of Time," William H.

Davies, from _Collected Poems_.

To The John Lane Company (New York) for "Loveliest of Trees," A. E.

Housman, from _A Shropshire Lad_; for "May is building her House," and "I meant to do my work to-day," Richard Le Gallienne, from _The Lonely Dancer_; for "The Joy of the Springtime," and "The Time of Roses,"

Sarojini Naidu, from _The Bird of Time_ and _The Broken Wing_; for "Heart's Garden," Norreys Jephson O'Conor, from _Celtic Memories_; for "Serenade," Marjorie L. C. Pickthall, from _The Lamp of Poor Souls_; for "There is Strength in the Soil," Arthur Stringer, from _Open Water_; for "Midsummer blooms within our quiet garden ways," "It was June in the garden," and "Within the garden there is healthfulness," Emile Verhaeren, from _The Sunlit Hours_ and _Afternoon_; for "In a Garden of Granada," Thomas Walsh, from _Gardens Overseas_; for "The Garden of Mnemosyne," Rosamund Marriott Watson, from _Collected Poems_; for "Eden-Hunger," William Watson, from _Retrogression, and Other Poems_; for "Spring Planting," Helen Hay Whitney, from _Herbs and Apples_.