copyright 1921, 1924, by Edna St. Vincent Millay. "I Shall Go Back," "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed," "Pity Me Not," "Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare," and "Departure" from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems, published by Harper & Brothers, copyright 1920, 1921, 1922 and 1923 by Edna St. Vincent Millay. "Sonnet to Gath," "On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven," "The Cameo," and "Justice Denied in Massachusetts," from The Buck in the Snow, published by Harper & Brothers, copyright 1928 by Edna St. Vincent Millay. "Oh, Sleep Forever in the Latmian Cave" from Fatal Interview, published by Harper & Brothers, copyright 1931 by Edna St. Vincent Millay. "The Return" and "See Where Capella with Her Golden Kids" from Wine from These Grapes, copyright 1934 by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

ROBERT M. MCBRIDE & COMPANY-for selections from Those Not Elect by Léonie Adams, and Body of This Death by Louise Bogan.

THE MANAS PRESS (Claude Bragdon)-for selections from Verse by Adelaide Crapsey.

THE METROPOLITAN PRESS (Portland, Oregon)-for a poem from The Mountain in the Sky by Howard McKinley Corning.

MINTON, BALCH AND COMPANY-for selections from Mr. Pope and Other Poems by Allen Tate.

THE MODERN LIBRARY-for the selections by Robinson Jeffers originally published in A Miscellany of American Poetry-1927 reprinted in Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems.

THOMAS B. MOSHER-for selections from A Quiet Road and A Wayside Lute by Lizette Woodworth Reese.

NEW DIRECTIONS-for selections from First Will & Testament by Kenneth Patchen, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities by Delmore Schwartz, The Complete Collected Poems: 1906-1938 of William Carlos Williams, The Broken Span by William Carlos Williams, and New Directions in Prose and Poetry: 1940.

PAGAN PUBLISHING COMPANY-for selections from Minna and Myself by Maxwell

Bodenheim.

RANDOM HOUSE-for selections from Collected Poems by Kenneth Fearing, Cawdor by Robinson Jeffers, Dear Judas and Other Poems by Robinson Jeffers, Thurso's Landing by Robinson Jeffers, Solstice by Robinson Jeffers, Be Angry at the Sun by Robinson Jeffers, and The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. Also for the poems, copyright individually by the authors, first printed in The Poetry Quartos by Robert Frost, E. A. Robinson, Conrad Aiken, William Rose Benét, and Elinor Wylie.

A. M. ROBERTSON-for selections from The House of Orchids by George Sterling. NORMAN REMINGTON COMPANY-for selections from Spicewood and Wild Cherry by Lizette Woodworth Reese.

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS-for selections from Preludes for Memnon and Selected Poems by Conrad Aiken, Dark Summer by Louise Bogan, The Complete Works of Eugene Field, Poems of Sidney Lanier, copyright 1884, 1891, 1916 by Mary D. Lanier, The Crows by David McCord, The Children of the Night and Town Down the River by Edwin Arlington Robinson, Poems (Revised Edition) by George Santayana, Poems: 1928-1931 by Allen Tate, Dust and Light and The

Black Panther by John Hall Wheelock-all of which are printed by permission of, and special arrangement with, Charles Scribner's Sons.

SHERMAN, FRENCH AND COMPANY-for selections from The Human Fantasy and The Beloved Adventure by John Hall Wheelock.

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY-for selections from Ballads of Lost Haven by Bliss Carman, Along the Trail by Richard Hovey, Songs from Vagabondia and More Songs from Vagabondia by Richard Hovey and Bliss Carman.

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F. A. STOKES COMPANY-for selections from War Is Kind by Stephen Crane and Grenstone Poems by Witter Bynner.

STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY-for a selection from Monday Morning by James Oppenheim.

THE TROUTBECK PRESS (Amenia, New York)-for selections from Dear Lovely Death by Langston Hughes.

HAROLD VINAL, LTD.-for selections from Hale's Pond by James Whaler.

THE VIKING PRESS-for selections from Boy in the Wind and The Flowering Stone by George Dillon, The Seventh Hill by Robert Hillyer, God's Trombones by James Weldon Johnson, The Vaunt of Man by William Ellery Leonard, The Ghetto and Sun-up by Lola Ridge, Under the Tree by Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Song in the Meadow by Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Growing Pains and Dreams Out of Darkness by Jean Starr Untermeyer.

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For those poems which have appeared in various publications but which have not yet been collected in volumes by their authors I am indebted to the following magazines:

THE AMERICAN MERCURY-for poems by David McCord and Merrill Moore.

THE AMERICAN REVIEW-for poems by Robert Penn Warren and John Crowe Ransom.

THE AMERICAN POETRY JOURNAL-for a poem by Robert Hillyer.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY-for poems by Robert Frost and Robert Hillyer.

THE NATION-for a poem by Mark Van Doren.

THE NEW REPUBLIC-for poems by Léonie Adams, George Dillon, John Crowe Ransom, and Robert Penn Warren.

THE NEW YORKER-for a poem by Stephen Vincent Benét.

POETRY: A MAGazine of Verse-for poems by Countee Cullen, Howard McKinley Corning, and Elizabeth Madox Roberts.

THE SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE-for poems by Anna Hempstead Branch, Genevieve Taggard, and Robinson Jeffers.

THE SOUTHERN REVIEW-for a poem by Robert Penn Warren.

THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW-for poems by Elizabeth Madox Roberts, David McCord, and Robinson Jeffers.

THE YALE REVIEW-for poems by Robert Frost and Melville Cane.

The introductory note to the poems by Walt Whitman is a revision of the paragraphs which first appeared in the editor's American Poetry from the Beginning to Whitman published in 1931.

For the privilege of printing poems in manuscript and other poems not yet in any of their volumes, I am gratefully indebted to Léonie Adams, James Agee, Conrad Aiken, Stephen Vincent Benét, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Melville Cane, John Gould Fletcher, Robert Frost, Robert Hillyer, Robinson Jeffers, David McCord, Merrill Moore, the late Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Delmore Schwartz, Wallace Stevens, Allen Tate, Genevieve Taggard, Muriel Rukeyser, Robert Penn Warren, William Carlos Williams, and Marya Zaturenska. All rights have been reserved by the authors, and permissions to reprint any of their poems must be made direct to them, their agents or publishers.

I must record my thanks to Henry A. Stickney and William W. Mathewson for permission to reprint the poems of Trumbull Stickney; to Julian R. Hovey for permission to reprint poems by Richard Hovey; and to Ruth Hall for her assistance concerning certain poems by her sister Hazel Hall.

For advice and helpful suggestions during the revision of this book, I am grateful to Kenneth A. Robinson, Dartmouth College; Guy S. Greene, Iowa State College; E. O. James, Mills College; and Robert Hillyer, Harvard University. Consultations, correspondence, and (especially) arguments have been especially fruitful with Jay Laughlin, Horace Gregory, Marya Zaturenska, and William Carlos Williams. Finally I must happily acknowledge the labors of my wife, Esther Antin, in the combined roles of critic and collaborator.

Contents