THE NFWIC. 409336 ASTOR LENCX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS. 7507 Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1906, by Duffield & Company, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Published September, 1906. To the Reader CER ERTAIN friends who had accompanied me through the enchanting fields of lyric verse, and for whom "The Queen's Garland" was woven and "The Kings Lyrics" were bound together, being now of graver mood, have desired me to gather for them a posy of Poems Divine and Moral,―chosen from the work of writers spiritual or contemplative. The burden thus laid upon me by so friendly hands I take up the more willingly, inasmuch as, without slighting the poets we so well love, from Surrey to Shirley, it extends our acquaintance and enables us to carry on the lyric line from Shirley to Stevenson, and to include many sweet singers whose verse, albeit well worthy of all honour, is, for the most part, read but one day in seven. It ill becomes the anthologist to trespass upon ground usurped by the theologian, but this much must be admitted, that if it be possible for harmony and loving-kindness to sway the hearts of men, and to unite under one broad banner warring denominations, the honour of bringing this to pass will be accorded, in no small measure, to |