The Second Book of Modern Verse; a selection from the work of contemporaneous American poets   By: Jessie Belle Rittenhouse (1869-1948)

[Note on text: Italicized lines or stanzas are marked by tildes (~). Other italicized words are capitalized. Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation is indented two spaces. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.]

The Second Book of Modern Verse

A Selection from the work of contemporaneous American poets Edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse Editor of The Little Book of Modern Verse [Selections made in 1919.]

Foreword

It was my intention, when preparing `The Little Book of Modern Verse', published in 1913, to continue the series by a volume once in five years, but as it seemed inadvisable to issue one during the war, it is now six years since the publication of the first volume.

In the meantime, that the series might cover the period of American poetry from the beginning, `The Little Book of American Poets' was edited, confined chiefly to work of the nineteenth century, but ending with a group of living poets whose work has fallen equally within our own period. This group, including Edwin Markham, Bliss Carman, Edith Thomas, Louise Imogen Guiney, Lizette Woodworth Reese, and many others whose work has enriched both periods, was fully represented also in `The Little Book of Modern Verse'; and it has seemed necessary, therefore keenly as I regret the necessity, which limits of space impose, to omit the work of all poets who have been represented in both of my former collections.

Indeed the period covered by the present volume has been so prolific that it became necessary, if one would represent it with even approximate adequacy, to forego including many poets from `The Little Book of Modern Verse' itself, and but twenty eight are repeated from that collection.

Even with these necessary eliminations in the interest of space for newer poets, the general scheme of the series that of small, intimate volumes that shall be typical of the period, rather than exhaustive has made it impossible to include all whose work I should otherwise have been glad to represent.

While I have not hesitated, where a poet's earlier work seemed finer and more characteristic than his later, to draw upon such earlier work, in the main `The Second Book of Modern Verse' has been selected from poetry published since 1913, the date of my first anthology.

Jessie B. Rittenhouse New York September 23, 1919

Contents

Abraham Lincoln walks at Midnight. [Vachel Lindsay] Acceptance. [Willard Wattles] Ad Matrem Amantissimam et Carissimam Filii in Aeternum Fidelitas. [John Myers O'Hara] After Apple Picking. [Robert Frost] After Sunset. [Grace Hazard Conkling] Afternoon on a Hill. [Edna St. Vincent Millay] Afterwards. [Mahlon Leonard Fisher] Ambition. [Aline Kilmer] The Ancient Beautiful Things. [Fannie Stearns Davis] Apology. [Amy Lowell] April on the Battlefields. [Leonora Speyer] April North Carolina. [Harriet Monroe] Atropos. [John Myers O'Hara] Autumn. [Jean Starr Untermeyer] Autumn Movement. [Carl Sandburg]

Ballad of a Child. [John G. Neihardt] Behind the House is the Millet Plot. [Muna Lee] Berkshires in April. [Clement Wood] Beyond Rathkelly. [Francis Carlin] Birches. [Robert Frost] The Bitter Herb. [Jeanne Robert Foster] Blind. [Harry Kemp] Blue Squills. [Sara Teasdale] The Breaking. [Margaret Steele Anderson]

Chanson of the Bells of Oseney. [Cale Young Rice] The Chant of the Colorado. [Cale Young Rice] The Child in Me. [May Riley Smith] The Chinese Nightingale. [Vachel Lindsay] Choice. [Angela Morgan] Cinquains. [Adelaide Crapsey] The City. [Charles Hanson Towne] City Roofs. [Charles Hanson Towne] Compensation. [William Ellery Leonard] Convention. [Agnes Lee] Cradle Song. [Josephine Preston Peabody]