The nature lover’s knapsack

On Knapsack Carrying

We are all knapsack carriers. And none of us travels far on the road of Life without discovering certain things which we would not be without,—things that seem indispensable to our happiness. These indispensable things we put, often unconsciously, into our knapsack to carry with us during the remainder of the journey.

The kinds of things we “tote” in our knapsack vary with the different stages of our journey. We begin by collecting pebbles for our sling shot, and in lieu of a literal knapsack we hide them in our boy’s pocket. A little farther along the journey we discover that marbles, or stamps, or arrowheads are the things that are indispensable to our happiness, and we gradually shift our knapsack load to meet the newer need.

Still later in life some of us accumulate coins and bank notes, stocks and mortgages, and other passing trifles that for the moment seem the only indispensable things to our happiness. We work ourselves sick, we sacrifice our friends, we succeed so well that soon our knapsack is too full for us to carry, and we go to some friendly banker and ask him to put it in his safety deposit vault where we may worry about it to our hearts’ content. And there it rests until we come to die, and the only joy it has brought us is the cheap joy of accumulation.

Some of us, however, by force of circumstance or by deliberate choice, begin early in life to collect in our knapsacks beautiful memories of sunsets, of cloud-capped hills and wind-swept plains, of deep-flowing rivers and talking brooks, memories of the infinite sky and the eternal sea, of bird songs and blossoms, of trembling trees and all the lovely things of nature. And after the first ecstasy of discovery, these things gradually become the indispensable things of our happiness and of our lives. Every spring these joys are reborn in us, and every autumn they flare up with the first reddening tree. Each month in the cycle of the year holds its unforgettable thrill, its reminder of ancient glories and happy memories.

Next to the recollection of beauties we have seen with our own eyes and carried long in the knapsack of our memory, there is no joy greater than walking afield with the poets, and spending an afternoon discovering new beauties and new meanings in Nature.

Soon or late every nature lover makes a collection of those poems that remind him of his own memories. These he treasures in his knapsack, and as the seasons come and go he takes them out to feed his soul and to refresh his spirit as he travels hopefully along the road of Life.

I would not for the world deprive any one of this pleasure. I only hope that this knapsack of nature poetry will be found a worthy travelling companion for every nature lover. It cannot be exhaustive, and it is in no sense a reference book. Its only purpose is to serve as a friendly guide to many of the most beautiful nature poems by English and American authors. They lead one over an unknown trail with here a glimpse of sea, there a racing cloud, now the patter of April rain, and the smell of apple blossoms. Open the book where you will, and it leads you off through field or forest, by babbling brook or singing sea.

An anthology necessarily implies an individual choice, and the selections within have been chosen almost without exception for the pleasure they have given me. Because I believe that Lyric poetry is the highest form of poetic expression, I have given the preference to poems that possess this singing quality.

In spite of the fact that in much of the poetry of the last twenty-five years the lyric note has been sadly absent, yet the book contains many exquisite lyrics by the “younger generation” which shows the persistence of this timeless quality of all great poetry.

I wish to acknowledge frankly my indebtedness to many who have preceded me in the making of anthologies; and to scores of authors and their publishers who have so generously given permission for me to include their poems. It is a goodly fellowship. If, after all, I have left out your favorite nature poem, please tell me so.

Edwin Osgood Grover

What the Knapsack Holds

Copyright Acknowledgments

The editor expresses his keen appreciation to the many poets and their publishers, who have so generously coöperated in the preparation of this volume by granting permission to include copyright material.

All rights to the poems are reserved by the legal holders of the copyrights.

To D. Appleton & Company for “Spring on the Off-Trail,” from Songs of the Stalwart, by Grantland Rice.

To The Atlantic Monthly, for “Hill Hunger,” and “A Blackbird Suddenly,” by Joseph Auslander.

To Richard A. Badger for “Traveller’s Joy,” “The Sea Wind,” “Countersign,” by Arthur Ketchum.

To Barse & Hopkins for “The Call of the Wild,” by Robert Service.

To Alfred Bartlett, for “September,” “The Gipsy Wedding,” “Gipsy Song,” “Upon Us Vagabonds,” “Song of the Open,” “The Sojourner,” “A la Belle Étoile,” “A Conversation,” “Lavender for Old Loves,” by Sara Hamilton Birchall.

To Ernest Benn, Limited, (London), for “The Blackbird,” “The Lilac,” by Humbert Wolfe.

To Brentano’s, Inc., for “Behind the Closed Eye,” “Farewell,” “The Winds of Life,” “Blind,” “Tell All the World,” “The Going of His Feet,” by Harry Kemp.

To Jonathan Cape, Limited, (London) for “Happy Wind,” “Dreams of the Sea,” by W. H. Davies.

To The Century Company, for “The Immortal,” “As the Tide Comes in,” “The Runaway,” by Cale Young Rice.

To Christian Endeavor World for “Changeless,” by Martha Haskell Clark.

To The Churchman, for “Traveller’s Joy,” and “Sea Wind,” by Arthur Ketchum.

To Cincinnati Times-Star, for “April Morning,” by George Elliston.

To Contemporary Verse, for “Wasted Hours,” by Medora Addison; “Walking at Night,” by Amory Hare; “Rain,” by Kenneth Slade Alling; “Sea Longing,” by Harold Vinal; “Two Old Men,” by Louise Driscoll.

To the Cornhill Publishing Company, for “The House of the Trees,” by Ethelwyn Wetherald.

To Country Life (London) for “Dawn,” by Isabel Butchart.

To Dodd, Mead & Company, for “The Sea,” by Nora Hopper; “I Meant to Do My Work Today,” by Richard Le Gallienne; “Walking at Night,” by Amory Hare.

To George H. Doran Company, for “Traveller’s Rest,” from Sailor Town by C. Fox-Smith, copyright 1919, by George Doran Company, publishers; “Carouse,” “The Best Road of All,” “Renewal,” from World of Windows by Charles Hanson Towne.

To Dorrance & Company for “Deep-Water Men,” “Deep Down,” from Songs of Men, by James Stuart Montgomery.

To E. P. Dutton & Company for “The Dandelions,” by Helen Gray Cone; “The Naturalist on a June Sunday,” “ABC’s in Green,” by Leonora Speyer.

To Federal National Bank, Boston, for “The Cry of the Dreamer,” by John Boyle O’Reilly.

To Forbes & Company for “Far From the Madding Crowd,” by Nixon Waterman.

To Good Housekeeping for “The Sea Road,” and “Sea Song,” by Martha Haskell Clark.

To Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc. for “Sea Call” from Cross Currents by Margaret Widdemer, copyright 1921, by Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc.

To Harper Bros. for “Afternoon on a Hill,” “God’s World,” “Journey,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

To Hodder & Stoughton, Limited, (London), for “Credo,” by Vera Wheatley.

To Henry Holt & Company for “Wind Litany,” by Margaret Widdemer; “God Is At His Anvil,” by Lew Sarett; “The Whole Duty of Berkshire Brooks,” “After Sunset,” by Grace Hazard Conkling.

To Houghton Mifflin Company for “A Strip of Blue” and “Is It Raining, Little Flower,” by Lucy Larcom; “The Singer’s Quest” by Odell Shepard; “Rhodora,” “Flower Chairs,” “Let Me Go Where’er I Will,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

To B. W. Huebsch, Inc., for “On the Hill,” by Irene Rutherford McLeod.

To Mitchell Kennerly for “The Wanderer,” by Zoe Atkins.

To Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. for “Little Things,” by Orrick Johns; “The Early Gods,” by Witter Bynner.

To J. L. Lippincott Company, for “April Rain,” by Robert Loveman.

To Little, Brown & Company, for “Autumn,” “The Robin,” “April,” “Indian Summer,” by Emily Dickinson.

To Longmans, Green & Co. (London) for “A Word With a Skylark,” by Sarah Piatt.

To Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. for “May-Lure,” “Dumb in June,” “Comfort of the Stars,” and “Song of the Sea,” by Richard Burton.

To The Lyric West for “The Coming of Dawn,” by Grace C. Dennen.

To The Macmillan Company for “Grace for Gardens,” by Louise Driscoll; “Sea-Fever,” “A Wanderer’s Song,” by John Masefield; “Up a Hill and a Hill,” “Gipsy Feet,” by Fannie Stearns Davis; “The Sweet, Low Speech of the Rain,” by Ella Higginson.

To Macmillan & Co. Ltd. (London) for “My Garden,” by T. E. Brown.

To McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, Limited, for “Wanderlust,” by Isabel Mackay.

To Thomas B. Mosher for “Birds of the Air They Sing it,” and “The Charm is Working Now,” by John Vance Cheney, “The Undersong,” by Fiona Macleod, “The Lark” and “April Weather,” by Lizette Woodworth Reese.

To L. C. Page & Company for “Gray Rocks and Grayer Sea,” “Afoot,” by Charles G. D. Roberts.

To Poetry for “Early Morn at Barges,” by Hermann Hagedorn; “Ellis Park,” by Helen Hoyt.

To G. P. Putnam’s Sons, for “The Country Faith,” “Spring,” “All the Lanes are Lyric,” from The Country Muse by Norman Gale; “April,” “The Gipsying,” “The Green Inn,” “A Song of Autumn,” “A City Voice,” “The Poplars,” “The Hills,” “A Morning,” by Theodosia Garrison.

To Reilly & Lee Co., for “The Call,” “God Made This Day For Me,” “Fishing,” “City Weary,” “The Vagabond,” by Edgar A. Guest.

To The Roycroft Magazine for “The Road that Leads to Home,” by Ethel E. Mannin.

To Charles Scribner’s Sons for “The Road That Leads to Nowhere,” by Corrinne Roosevelt Robinson; “Homesick,” by Julia C. R. Dorr; “The Wind,” by John Galsworthy; “The Trees and the Master” and “Marshes of Glynn” (Extract), by Sidney Lanier; “Trees,” “Of All the Skies,” by Henry van Dyke.

To Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd. (London), for “Farewell,” “The Turn of the Year,” and “The Epitaph,” by Katherine Tynan; “Wanderthirst,” by Gerald Gould.

To Small, Maynard & Co., for “The Whisper of Earth,” by Edward J. O’Brien; “Clover,” by John B. Tabb; “Camping Song,” “Trees,” “April Weather,” “An Autumn Garden,” “The Cry of the Hillborn,” “Daisies,” “The Joys of the Road,” “A Vagabond’s Song,” “Spring Song,” “Marigolds,” “A More Ancient Mariner,” “The Mendicants,” “A Song of the Sea,” “St. Bartholomew’s on the Hill,” “The Deserted Pasture,” by Bliss Carman; “Comrades” (Extracts), “Spring” (Extracts), “The Faun,” “Short Beach,” “Hunting Song,” “Seaward” (Extracts), by Richard Hovey.

To the Boston Evening Transcript for “Prayer Before Poems,” by Anne Blackwell Payne.

To The Christian Century for “Spring’s Answer,” by Edwin Osgood Grover.

To Country Life in America for “Down East and Up Along,” by Edwin Osgood Grover.

To The Chicago Tribune for “Sea Magic.”

To Yale University Press, for “Overtones,” from In April Once, by William Alexander Percy; and “Good Company,” from Blue Smoke by Karle Wilson Baker.

To Jonathan Cape, Ltd. for “Happy Wind” and “Dreams of the Sea,” by W. H. Davies.

The following individuals have also given their permission for the use of copyright material, and the editor’s thanks are due them personally.

To Joseph Auslander for “Hill-Hunger,” “A Blackbird Suddenly.”

To Kendall Banning for “Wander-Lure.”

To Katherine Lee Bates for “Gipsy-Heart.”

To C. G. Blanden for “A Song the Grass Sings.”

To William Stanley Braithwaite for “Sic Vita” from The House Of Falling Leaves.

To Dana Burnet for “The Road to Vagabondia.”

To Richard Burton for “May-Lure,” “Dumb in June,” (Extracts) “Comfort of the Stars,” “Song of the Sea.”

To Witter Bynner for “The Early Gods” and “A Phœbe Bird.”

To Stephen Chalmers for “The Tree-Top Road.”

To Eugene F. Clark for “The Sea Road,” “Changeless,” “Black Ashes,” “Sea Song,” by Martha Haskell Clark.

To Mary Carolyn Davies for “Comrades of the Trail.”

To Babette Deutsch for “The Hound.”

To Louise Driscoll, for “The Spring Market” and “Two Old Men.”

To Ella Elizabeth Egbert for “Days Like These.”

To George Elliston for “April Morning.”

To Jeanne Robert Foster for “Song of Ballyshannon.”

To Hamlin Garland for “The Toil of the Trail,” “Do You Fear the Wind?”

To Charlotte Perkins Gilman for “Tree-Feelings.”

To Eva Gore-Booth, “The Perilous Light,” from manuscript; “The Waves of Breffny.”

To Gerald Gould for “Wanderthirst.”

To Arthur Guiterman for “The Hills” from The Mirthful Lyre.

To Hermann Hagedorn, for “Early Morning at Bargis.”

To Ella Higginson for “The Sweet Low Speech of the Rain.”

To Julian Hovey for “Seaward,” (Extracts) by Richard Hovey.

To Arthur Ketchum for “The Sea-Wind,” “Traveller’s Joy.”

To Leslie Nelson Jennings for “Highways.”

To Orrick Johns, for “Little Things.”

To Ruth Kauffman for “Vagabond.”

To Theda Kenyon for “In the Garden.”

To Georgiana Goddard King for “Song.”

To Louis Loveman for “April Rain” by Robert Loveman.

To Ethel E. Mannin for “Ship-Love,” “The Road that Leads to Home,” “The Secret Voices,” “Out-of-Doors.”

To Edwin Markham for “A Prayer.”

To John Steven McGroarty for “The Port o’ Heart’s Desire” and “The King’s Highway.”

To Edward J. O’Brien for “The Whisper of Earth.”

To Lancaster Pollard for “Denial,” “Morning Song,” “April’s Coming,” “Clouds and Sky.”

To Lizette Woodworth Reese for “The Lark.”

To Cole Young Rice for “As the Tide Comes In,” “The Mystic,” “The Runaway,” “The Immortal.”

To Jessie B. Rittenhouse for “The Green Tree in the Fall.”

To Clinton Scollard for “Streams,” “Sunflowers,” “April Music,” “Song in March,” “The Trumpet of the Dawn.”

To May Riley Smith for “Sorrow in a Garden,” “The Tree-Top Road.”

To Leonora Speyer for “A B C’s in Green,” and “The Naturalist on a June Sunday.”

To W. G. Tinckom-Fernandez for “Road Song,” “The Beloved Vagabond.”

To Charles Hanson Towne for “Carouse,” “The Best Road of All,” “Renewal.”

To Katherine Tynan for “Farewell,” “The Turn of the Year” and “The Epitaph.”

To Vera Wheatley for “Credo.”

To Humbert Wolfe for “The Lilac,” “The Blackbird.”

To William Watson for “April, April.”

E. O. G.

A Wanderer’s Song

John Masefield

The Singer’s Quest

The Toil of the Trail

Two Old Men

The Best Road of All

The Cry of the Dreamer

Highways

Afoot and Light-Hearted

The Path that Leads to Nowhere

City-Weary

The Faun

Richard Hovey

The Call of the Wild ⁠ [1]

A City Voice

Fishing

Camping Song

The Green Inn

Wanderlust

Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

Song ⁠ [2]

In City Streets

“ Up! Up! My Friend, and Quit Your Books ”

William Wordsworth

Road Song

Walking at Night

Road Song

A Song of the Open Road

A Maine Trail

Gertrude Huntington McGiffert

The Spell of the Pool

The Lake

Eleanour Norton

The Great Outdoors

Come, Spur Away!

Hunting Song

The Call

The King’s Highway “El Camino Real”

God Made This Day For Me

The Country Faith

Thomas E. Brown

Afoot

Charles G. D. Roberts

Grace for Gardens

My Garden

April

A Song the Grass Sings

The Young Dandelion

Sunflowers

Wishing

Rain

To the Dandelion

The Grass

Walt Whitman

Buttercups

The Lilac

The Hollyhocks

The Ragged Regiment

Marigolds

In a Garden

The Dandelions

Rhodora

Daisies

Bliss Carman

Out in the Fields with God

The Blackbird

Humbert Wolfe

The Robin

Clover

John B. Tabb

A Conversation

A Yellow Pansy

The Answer

A Prayer

Joyce Kilmer

Tree Feelings

Charlotte Perkins Stetson

ABC’S in Green

Leonora Speyer

O Dreamy, Gloomy, Friendly Trees!

God, When You Thought of a Pine Tree

The House of the Trees

Trees

The Trees and the Master

The Trees

Samuel Valentine Cole

Three Trees

What Do We Plant?

Trees

The Trees

Good Company

The Green Tree In The Fall

E. O. G.

Sea-Fever

John Masefield

A Son of the Sea

Dreams of the Sea

Going Down in Ships

The Waves of Breffny

Short Beach

Sea Call

Ship-Love

The Sea

Coquette

Keith Stuart

The Deep-Water Man

Sea Longing

Harold Vinal

Had I the Choice

Gray

Oscar Williams

A Pagan Hymn

As the Tide Comes In

A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea

The Undersong

Gray Rocks and Grayer Sea

Charles G. D. Roberts

The Sea

The Sea Road

Martha Haskell Clarke

The Sea ⁠ [3] — I — II — III — IV — V — VI

Richard Hovey

The World is Too Much With Us

William Wordsworth

Sunrise

Song of the Sea

Farewell

The Return

The Port o’ Heart’s Desire

John S. McGroarty

Sea-Urge

The Ocean

A Song of Desire

A Sea Change

Dorothy Peace

Twilight At Sea

Sea-Song

Martha Haskell Clark

Deep Down

Do You Fear the Wind?

Hamlin Garland

Hark to the Shouting Wind

Who Has Seen the Wind?

Wind

The Sea-Wind

Arthur Ketchum

I Meant to Do My Work Today

That Wind Is Best

Happy Wind

Wind-Litany

Margaret Widdemer

A Morning

The Wind’s Life

The Mystic

Richard Hovey

The Cry of the Hillborn

Bliss Carman

Up a Hill and a Hill

Hills

Again Among the Hills

Hill Hunger

Afternoon on a Hill

The Hills

On a Hill

Richard Hovey

Traveller’s Joy

Arthur Ketchum

Ellis Park

Afoot

The Going of His Feet

Down East and Up Along

The Joys of the Road

Song of the Open

Rebellion

The Tree-Top Road

Early Morning at Bargis

Denial

Lancaster Pollard

“A la Belle Étoile”

Journey

The Sojourner

Traveller’s Rest

Far From the Madding Crowd

Streams

The Call

Edgar A. Guest

The Road that Leads to Home

Robert Louis Stevenson

Wanderthirst

Gerald Gould

The Vagabond

Gipsy Song

The Road To Vagabondia

Gipsy Feet

A Strip of Blue

Black Ashes

The Wander Lure

Comrades of the Trail

The Vagrant

The Gipsy Wedding

Sara Hamilton Birchall

The Vagabond At Home

The Gipsy Trail

St. Bartholomew’s On The Hill

Fishing