The Worlds Best Poetry, Volume 4

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Carman
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Title: The World's Best Poetry Volume IV.
Author: Bliss Carman
Release Date: June 28, 2004 [EBook #12759]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
WORLD'S BEST POETRY VOLUME IV. ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Leah Moser and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY
_I Home: Friendship
II Love
III Sorrow and Consolation
IV The
Higher Life
V Nature
VI Fancy Sentiment
VII Descriptive:
Narrative
VIII National Spirit
IX Tragedy: Humor
X Poetical
Quotations_
THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY
IN TEN VOLUMES, ILLUSTRATED
Editor-in-Chief
BLISS CARMAN
Associate Editors

John Vance Cheney
Charles G.D. Roberts
Charles F. Richardson

Francis H. Stoddard
Managing Editor
John R. Howard
1904
The World's Best Poetry
Vol. IV
THE HIGHER LIFE
RELIGION AND POETRY
By
WASHINGTON GLADDEN
NOTICE OF COPYRIGHTS.
I.
American poems in this volume within the legal protection of copyright
are used by the courteous permission of the owners,--either the
publishers named in the following list or the authors or their
representatives in the subsequent one,--who reserve all their rights. So
far as practicable, permission has been secured also for poems out of
copyright.
PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY. 1904.
Messrs. D. APPLETON & CO., New York.--W.G. Bryant: "The Future
Life."
The ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY, Cincinnati.--W.D. Gallagher:
"The Laborer."
Messrs. T.Y. CROWELL & CO., New York.--S.K. Bolton: "Her
Creed."

Messrs. E.P. DUTTON & CO., New York.--Ph. Brooks: "O Little
Town of Bethlehem;" E. Sears: "The Angel's Song."
Messrs. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Boston.--Alice Cary: "My
Creed;" Phoebe Cary_: "Nearer Home;" _J.F. Clarke: "The Caliph and
Satan," "Cana;" R.W. Emerson_: "Brahma," "Good-bye," "The
Problem;" Louise I. Guiney_: "Tryste Noël;" J. Hay_: "Religion and
Doctrine;" C.W. Holmes_: "The Living Temple;" H.W. Longfellow:
"King Robert of Sicily," "Ladder of St. Augustine," "Psalm of Life,"
"Santa Filomena," "Sifting of Peter," "Song of the Silent Land,"
"To-morrow;" _S. Longfellow_: "Vesper Hymn;" J.R. Lowell: "Vision
of Sir Launfal;" Frances P.L. Mace_: "Only Waiting;" _Caroline A.B.
Mason: "The Voyage;" T. Parker: "The Higher Good," "The Way, the
Truth, and the Life;" Eliza Scudder_: "The Love of God," "Vesper
Hymn;" E.C. Stedman_: "The Undiscovered Country;" Harriet B.
Stowe: "Knocking, Ever Knocking," "The Other World;" J. Very:
"Life," "The Spirit Land;" J.G. Whittier: "The Eternal Goodness," "The
Meeting," "The Two Angels," "The Two Rabbis;" Sarah C. Woolsey:
"When."
The J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, Philadelphia.--Margaret J.
Preston: "Myrrh-Bearers."
Messrs. LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Boston.--J.W. Chadwick: "The Rise
of Man;" Emily Dickinson: "Found Wanting," "Heaven."
The LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY, Boston.--P.H. Hayne:
"Patience."
Messrs. L.C. PAGE & CO., Boston.--C.G.D. Roberts: "The Aim,"
"Ascription."
Messrs. SCOTT, FORESMAN & CO., Chicago.--C.P. Taylor: "The
Old Village Choir."
Messrs. HERBERT S. STONE & CO., Chicago.--G. Santayana:
"Faith."

The YOUNG CHURCHMAN COMPANY, Milwaukee.--A.C. Coxe:
"The Chimes of England."
II.
American poems in this volume by the authors whose names are given
below are the copyrighted property of the authors, or of their
representatives named in parenthesis, and may not be reprinted without
their permission, which for the present work has been courteously
granted.
PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY. 1904.
A. Coles (A. Coles, Jr., M.D.); J.A. Dix (Rev. Morgan Dix, D.D.); _P.L.
Dunbar; W.C. Gannett; W. Gladden; S.P. McL. Pratt; O. Huckel; Ray
Palmer_ (Dr. Charles R. Palmer); A.D.F. Randolph (Arthur D.F.
Randolph).
RELIGION AND POETRY
BY WASHINGTON GLADDEN.
The time is not long past when the copulative in that title might have
suggested to some minds an antithesis,--as acid and alkali, or heat and
cold. That religion could have affiliation with anything so worldly as
poetry would have seemed to some pious people a questionable
proposition. There were the Psalms, in the Old Testament, to be sure;
and the minister had been heard to allude to them as poetry: might not
that indicate some heretical taint in him, caught, perchance, from the
"German neologists" whose influence we were beginning to dread? It
did not seem quite orthodox to describe the Psalms as poems; and when,
a little later, some one ventured to speak of the Book of Job as a
dramatic poem, there were many who were simply horrified. Indeed, it
was difficult for many good people to consider the Biblical writings as
in any sense literature; they belonged in a category by themselves, and
the application to them of the terms by which we describe similar
writings in other books appeared to many good men and women a kind
of profanation. This was not, of course, the attitude of educated men

and women, but something akin to it affected large numbers of
excellent people.
We are well past that period, and the relations