

E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Leonard Johnson, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)



POEMS

by

MARY BAKER EDDY

Author of "Science and Health with Key
to the Scriptures"







Published by The
Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker G. Eddy
Boston, U.S.A.

Authorized Literature of
The First Church of Christ, Scientist
in Boston, Massachusetts

Copyright, 1910
by Mary Baker Eddy
All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America




PREFACE


_The poems garnered up in this little volume were written at different
periods in the life of the author, dating from her early girlhood up to
recent years. They were not written with a view of making a book, each
poem being the spontaneous outpouring of a deeply poetic nature and
called forth by some experience that claimed her attention._

_The "Old Man of the Mountain," for instance, was written while the
author was contemplating this lofty New Hampshire crag, whose rugged
outlines resemble the profile of a human face. Inspired by the grandeur
of this masterpiece of nature's handiwork, and looking "up through
nature, unto nature's God," the poem began to take form in her thought,
and alighting from her carriage, she seated herself by the roadside and
began to write. Some tourists who were passing, and who made her
acquaintance, asked her what she was writing, and she replied by reading
the poem to them. They were so pleased with it that each requested a
copy, which was subsequently mailed to them. Similar requests continued
to reach the author for years afterward, until the poem finally found
its way into print, appearing, together with "The Valley Cemetery," in a
book "Gems for You," published in Manchester, N. H., in 1850, and again
in Boston, in 1856._

_The poem on the "Dedication of a Temperance Hall," in Lynn, Mass., in
