Some teachers will ask how poetry is to be taught. To that question the absolute answer is: through the ear. All poetry is to be read aloud and well read. The dry-as-dust fellow who wants to read it merely as prose should be indicted for a crime against art. Poetry must be read musically and with a natural time and swing. At this point it should be understood that part of the work of a teacher is to develop a good reading tone of voice. The present-day tendencies toward shrieking and a mouthing of words are most deplorable tendencies. Let the teacher first master the poem and then teach it by word of mouth, and teach it as music. It will finally impress itself on the child. Now this reading by which the poem is to be taught is to be merely a good natural reading--not the affected and exaggerated one of the elocutionist. Let the child get the idea that he must say the poem over and over until it has become his own. There is much pleasure in saying poetry aloud when one is walking by himself--a rare luxury in modern city or suburban life. It does not matter if passers-by look on this practice as a sort of lunacy, for it is a most commendable kind of lunacy to have and one that all persons are not so lucky as to possess. So much is inviting us that no claim is made that the included list is by any means the best one hundred poems. But it is one that the experience of some years of schoolroom work has proved passing good. At least it is good enough for the teacher who has not made a thorough study of the subject. This, that, and t'other substitute might be offered; but when all is said, the selections as they stand, if well mastered, will be something of a king's treasury to the boy. For the convenience of the teacher the selections are given complete. With but few exceptions the poems are unabridged and under the original titles. When an extract has been made from a longer poem, the first verse of the selection has generally been given as a title. All poems might be remembered by first verses rather than by titles, and every anthology should have an alphabetical index to first verses. The poems as given below will vary in their appeal largely according to the mood of the teacher and his natural temperament; but he can teach no poem well unless he has mastered it himself and has come to appreciate it. There are a few selections, however, as "The Fairy Life," "The Forsaken Merman," and "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," that are so wholly delightful that the teacher may hold them as favourite children of the imagination. Let the teacher master the selections given below, and if he so choose tear out the pages containing them and then throw the rest of the book away; for if he truly knows these poems by heart, he will no longer be a stranger to literature of power, and the purpose of this book will have been fulfilled. PART II SELECTIONS FOR MEMORIZING FIRST YEAR MOTHER GOOSE SONGS I