For you, Mother,
With a curl of cloud and a feather of blue
And a mist
Blowing along the sky.
If I sing it some day, under my voice,
Will it make you happy?

Thanks are due to the editors of Poetry:
A Magazine of Verse, The Delineator,
Good Housekeeping, The Lyric, St.
Nicholas, and Contemporary Verse for
their courteous permission to reprint
many of the following poems.




PREFACE

A book which needs to be written is one dealing
with the childhood of authors. It would be
not only interesting, but instructive; not merely
profitable in a general way, but practical in a
particular. We might hope, in reading it, to gain
some sort of knowledge as to what environments
and conditions are most conducive to the growth
of the creative faculty. We might even learn how
not to strangle this rare faculty in its early years.

At this moment I am faced with a difficult task,