PREFACE
In homely phrase, this is a sort of "second helping" of a dish that has pleased the taste of thousands. Our first collection of Poems Teachers Ask For was the response to a demand for such a book, and this present volume is the response to a demand for "more." In Book One it was impracticable to use all of the many poems entitled to inclusion on the basis of their being desired. We are constantly in receipt of requests that certain selections be printed in NORMAL INSTRUCTOR-PRIMARY PLANS on the page "Poems Our Readers Have Asked For." More than two hundred of these were chosen for Book One, and more than two hundred others, as much desired as those in the earlier volume, are included in Book Two.
Because of copyright restrictions, we often have been unable to present, in magazine form, verse of large popular appeal. By special arrangement, a number of such poems were included in Book One of Poems Teachers Ask For, and many more are given in the pages that follow. Acknowledgment is made below to publishers and authors for courteous permission to reprint in this volume material which they control:
THE CENTURY COMPANY—The Minuet, from "Poems and Verses," by Mary Mapes Dodge.
W.B. CONKEY COMPANY—Solitude, from "Poems of Passion," and How Salvator Won, from "Kingdom of Love," both by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.—Encouragement, by Paul Laurence Dunbar, copyright by Dodd, Mead & Company; Work, by Angela Morgan, from "The Hour Has Struck," copyright 1914 by Angela Morgan.
DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY—How Did You Die? from "Impertinent Poems," and The Sin of the Coppenter Man, from "I Rule the House," both by Edmund Vance Cooke.
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY—The House with Nobody in It, from "Trees and Other Poems," by Joyce Kilmer, copyright 1914 by George H. Doran Company, publishers.
HAMLIN GARLAND—My Prairies and Color in the Wheat.
ISABEL AMBLER GILMAN—The Sunset City.
HARPER & BROTHERS—Over the Hill from the Poor-House and The School-Master's Guests, from "Farm Legends," by Will Carleton.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY—The Sandman, by Margaret Vandegrift; The Sin of Omission and Our Own, by Margaret E. Sangster; The Ballad of the Tempest, by James T. Fields; also the poems by Henry W. Longfellow, John G. Whittier, James Russell Lowell, Alice Cary, Phoebe Cary, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and J.T. Trowbridge, of whose works they are the authorized publishers.
CHARLES H.L. JOHNSTON—The President.
RUDYARD KIPLING and DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY (A.P. WATT & SON, London, England)—Mother o' Mine.
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD COMPANY—Hullo and The Volunteer Organist, both from "Back Country Poems," by Sam Walter Foss, and He Worried About It, from "Whiffs from Wild Meadows," by Sam Walter Foss.
EDWIN MARKHAM—Lincoln, the Man of the People.
REILLY & LEE CO.—Home, from "A Heap o' Livin'," by Edgar A. Guest.
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY—Our Flag, by Margaret E. Sangster.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS—I Have a Rendezvous with Death, by Alan Seeger; Song of the Chattahoochee, by Sidney Lanier; If All the Skies, by Henry van Dyke.
HARR WAGNER PUBLISHING COMPANY—Mothers of Men and The Fortunate Isles, by Joaquin Miller.
THE PUBLISHERS.
POEMS TEACHERS ASK FOR
BOOK TWO
Home
| It takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home, |
| A heap o' sun an' shadder, an' ye sometimes have t' roam |
| Afore ye really 'preciate the things ye left behind, |
| An' hunger fer 'em somehow, with 'em allus on yer mind. |
| It don't make any differunce how rich ye get t' be, |
| How much yer chairs an' tables cost, how great yer luxury; |
| It ain't home t' ye, though it be the palace of a king, |
| Until somehow yer soul is sort o' wrapped 'round everything. |
| Home ain't a place that gold can buy or get up in a minute; |
| Afore it's home there's got t' be a heap o' livin' in it: |
| Within the walls there's got t' be some babies born, and then |
| Right there ye've got t' bring 'em up t' women good, an' men; |
| And gradjerly, as time goes on ye find ye wouldn't part |
| With anything they ever used—they've grown into yer heart; |
| The old high chairs, the playthings, too, the little shoes they wore |
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Ye hoard; an' if ye could ye'd keep the thumbmarks on
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