Books published by publisher Thomas Crowell Company

Here is a magnificent collection of verse, compiled with discrimination, for the pleasure not only of the poetry lover but the music lover, too. From Euripides and Pindar, through Herrick and Shakespeare, to Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens, these poems celebrate the power of music and bring to the reader "the full-figured song of the universe unending." The poems fall naturally into five sections: All instruments, Singing over the Earth, One God is God of Both, Poet to Dancer, Music Shall Untune the Sky. Within these groups are poems that speak to us with their rhythms, mirror the simplicity and beauty of loved songs, and stretch our minds with their profundity. To the poet, the country fiddler is as interesting as the virtuoso, the little girl at the piano as serious as Paderewski. So there are poems here about street musicians as well as great artists, and about teachers as well as performers and composers. Just as men have written of music, they have written of the dance. The dance has kindled the imagination of many poets, who see in it a way to unite the arts of seeing and the arts of hearing. Their poems here have the grace and serious and joy that are the essence of the dance.