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One Hundred and
One Famous
Poems

With a

Prose Supplement

COPYRIGHT 1920

R. J. COOK

301 So. WABASH AVE.

CHICAGO

BEQUEST

ESTATE OF SETTIE BLUME STERNE

JUNE 10, 1930

A

PREFACE

SPIRIT of daring out of all proportion to any hope
of gain must at times possess a publisher.

You doubtless have heard the story of the "One Hundred and One Best Songs"; how its publishers printed several hundred thousand books in order that they might be sold at a price so low as to enable every child to have one. That, likewise, is the aim of this collection.

To that eminent critic of English verse whose painstaking care in proof-reading has made this voiume authoritative, the publisher acknowledges his gratitude and debt.

The selections by Emerson, Burroughs, Holmes, Lowell, Sill, Whittier, Cary, Larcom and Longfellow, are used by permission of and special arrangement with Houghton-Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of their works.

Grateful acknowledgment is also made to D. Appleton & Company, F. W. Bourdillon, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Charles Scribner's Sons, Doubleday-Page & Company, Little, Brown & Company, George H. Doran Company, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company, A. P. Watt & Son, "The Academy," London, and the Librarian, University of Edinburgh, without whose kind co-operation this collection could not have been made,

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The Builders

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (Born February 27, 1807; Died March 24, 1882)

All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.

Nothing useless is, or low;

Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest.

For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;

Our todays and yesterdays

Are the blocks with which we build.

Truly shape and fashion these;

Leave no yawning gaps between; Think not, because no man sees, Such things will remain unseen.

In the elder days of Art,

Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part;

For the gods see everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,

Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house where gods may dwell
Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,

Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble, as they seek to climb.

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