Picked by my long-time friend, majestic mama and fellow chic geek, Becky!
TITLE: Poetry for Pleasure — The Hallmark Book of Poetry
AUTHOR: Various — Selected and Arranged by the Editors of Hallmark Cards, Inc.
ILLUSTRATED BY: Various
YEAR: 1960 — First Edition!
WHERE IT CAME FROM: A thrift store rescue!
DEFINING FEATURES: Oof, where do I begin! A lovely tattered paper cover with a piece weathered from the trauma of a former price sticker. Within the paper cover, at the ‘front,’ scribbled in fading pencil cursive of utmost quality, “Hallmark Nov. 5, 1960.” In the same hand writing, and underline beneath the price (a mere $3.95 for a 442 page collection of poetry) with “U C G” or “U C Q” written beneath. There are also yellowed/browned/curled slips of paper marking certain pages that I will never remove. The following are the poems on the pages marked with gorgeously aged… what seems to be, maybe, receipt or calculator paper. There are no notes on the the papers that point to the importance of one poem or another:
- Act II — Katherine Davis
- Ruth 1:16-18 (Bible Verse? Don’t know what this is doing in a Hallmark collection of poetry, but it’s sort of lovely in a sad way either way.)
- Song — Oliver Goldsmith
- Apology for Youth — Sister M. Madeleva, C.S.C.
- Song of Solomon 2:8-13
- From “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” — Edward FitzGerald
- Sonnet XXIX — William Shakespeare
- She Came Out Of The Frost — Alexander Blok — Translated by Avrahm Yarmolinksy (I ADORE this one… it’s a treat!)
- Silver — Walter de la Mare
- Night Clouds — Amy Lowell
- Song from “Pippa Passes” — Robert Browning
- Do You Fear the Wind? — Hamlin Garland
- Song of January — Gerta Kennedy
- To The Lady-Bird — Old English Song (Lady-bird, Lady-bird, fly away home!)
- The Double Tree — Winfield Townley Scott
- Blades of Grass — Stephen Crane
- Sudden Frost — David Wagoner
- The Windhover — Gerard Manley Hopkins
- I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud — William Wordsworth
- The Return — Edna St. Vincent Millay
- A Thing of Beauty — John Keats
- Sea Fever — John Masefield
- Cradle Song — William Blake
- The Children’s Hour — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (A classic!)
- What’s the Use - Ogden Nash
- I Take’em And Like ‘em — Margaret Fishback
- On His Books — Hilaire Belloc
- Grandmamma’s Birthday — Hilaire Belloc
- Enigma for Christmas Shoppers — Phyllis McGinley
- The Reader Writes — Carl Crane
- The Dignity of Labor — Robert Bersohn
- The Honey Bee — Don Marquis (Adorable!)
- The Ape — Roland Young
- The Ass — Edwin Allan
- Cold Face — Dick Emmons
- Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad Ali Beg — T. S. Eliot (The poet writes of himself!)
