A STUDY OF POETRY

CHAPTER I


A GLANCE AT THE BACKGROUND

It is a gray day in autumn. I am sitting at my desk, wondering how to
begin the first chapter of this book about poetry. Outside the window
a woman is contentedly kneeling on the upturned brown earth of her
tulip-bed, patting lovingly with her trowel as she covers the bulbs
for next spring's blossoming. Does she know Katharine Tynan's verses
about "Planting Bulbs"? Probably not. But I find myself dropping the
procrastinating pen, and murmuring some of the lines:

"Setting my bulbs a-row
In cold earth under the grasses,
Till the frost and the snow
Are gone and the Winter passes--

* * * * *

"Turning the sods and the clay
I think on the poor sad people
Hiding their dead away
In the churchyard, under the steeple.

"All poor women and men,
Broken-hearted and weeping,