

This etext was transcribed by Les Bowler.

          “_Whatever your occupation may be_, _and however crowded_
         _your hours with affairs_, _do not fail to secure at least_
              _a few minutes every day for refreshment of your_
                     _inner life with a bit of poetry_.”

                                * * * * *





                                  Poems
                            You Ought to Know


                                * * * * *

                               SELECTED BY
                             ELIA W. PEATTIE
                (_Literary Editor of the Chicago Tribune_)

                                * * * * *

                              ILLUSTRATED BY
                             ELLSWORTH YOUNG

                                * * * * *

                       [Picture: Publisher’s logo]

                                * * * * *

                   CHICAGO      NEW YORK       TORONTO
                        Fleming H. Revell Company
                           LONDON AND EDINBURGH

                                * * * * *

                             Copyright, 1902
                            By Tribune Company

                                * * * * *

                 Each illustration copyrighted separately

                                * * * * *

                             Copyright, 1903
                        Fleming H. Revell Company

                                * * * * *




INTRODUCTION


Each morning, for several months, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE has published at
the head of its first column, verses under the caption: “Poems You Ought
to Know.”  It has explained its action by the following quotation from
Professor Charles Eliot Norton:

    “_Whatever your occupation may be_, _and however crowded your hours
    with affairs_, _do not fail to secure at least a few minutes every
    day for refreshment of your inner life with a bit of poetry_.”

By publishing these poems THE TRIBUNE hopes to accomplish two things:
first, to inspire a love of poetry in the hearts of many of its readers
who have never before taken time or thought to read the best poems of
this and other centuries and lands; and, secondly, to remind those who
once loved song, but forgot it among the louder voices of the world, of
the melody that enchanted them in youth.

The title has carried with it its own standard, and the poems have been
kept on a plane above jocularity or mere prettiness of versification;
rather have they tried to teach the doctrines of courage, of nature-love,
of pure and noble melody.  It has been the ambition of those selecting
the verses to choose something to lift the reader above the “petty round
of irritating concerns and duties,” and the object will have been
achieved if it has helped anyone to “play the man,” “to go blithely about
his business all the day,” with a consciousness of that abounding beauty
in the world of thought which is the common property of all men.

No anthology of English verse can be complete, and none can satisfy all.
The compiler’s individual taste, tempered and guided by established
authority, is almost the only standard.  This collection has been
compiled not by one but by many thousands, and their selections here
appear edited and winnowed as the idea of the series seemed to dictate.
The book appears at the wide-spread and almost universal request of those
who have watched the bold experiment of a great Twentieth-Century
American newspaper giving the place of honor in its columns every day to
a selection from the poets.

For permission to reprint certain poems by Longfellow, Lowell, Harte,
Hay, Bayard Taylor, Holmes, Whittier, Parsons, and Aldrich, graciously
accorded by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., the publishers, thanks are
gratefully acknowledged.  To Charles Scribner’s Sons, for an extract from
Lanier’s poems, and, lastly, to the many thousand readers, who, by their
sympathy, appreciation, and help have encouraged the continu