A child’s enjoyment, as I said above, is what I have striven for in this collection. We who have seen how poetry has come to our rescue with its delight, its healing, and its new courage in times of stress and sorrow, know that it is an inestimable possession. We cannot come to the knowledge of it too early. If we can have a clear personal realization while we are children, that we love poetry, no amount of well-meaning but sometimes tactless and uninspired teaching of it in schools and colleges can shake us in the knowledge of that love. I remember that the first poem I was condemned to learn by heart in school was “The Builders” by Longfellow. I say condemned, but it was not as a punishment.

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