Copyright, 1908, by Dodge Publishing Co.
[POEMS CHILDREN LOVE.]

The selections from the Poems of Alice Cary,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Lucy Larcom, H. W. Longfellow, James Russell
Lowell, T. W. Parsons, E. R. Sill and J. G. Whit-
tier are used by permission of and by special ar-
rangement with Houghton, Mifflin & Co., author-
ized publishers of their works. To them and to
Mr. Wallace Rice, J. J. Roche, B. F. Johnson Pub-
lishing Co., D. Appleton & Company, Bobbs-Mer-
rill Company, Charles Scribner's Sons, and many
others, my thanks are due for generous permis-
sion to use poems copyrighted by them. P. W. C.

histor
Miss With Rickert

963104

PREFACE

THIS Collection of poems for children, by grouping together those intended for various ages, aims to assist parents and teachers in selecting suitable literature for those of tender years.

Three stages of development are thus provided for, roughly corresponding to the kindergarten, the grammar, and the high schools; the first group taking in those between the ages of three and six, the second those from seven to twelve, and the last all from thirteen to seventeen years old.

Impossible as it is to draw any hard and fast line in these several groups, such is the difference in the temperament and development of the young, nevertheless the arrangement will be found suggestive and stimulating, it is hoped, even in those cases where it appears to be least exact. In any event, the volume opens to children, in an order natural to the unfolding of their intellectual and æsthetic powers, the gates of that most wonderful of human kingdoms, the realm of English poetry.