IT is a gray day in autumn. I am sitting at
my desk, wondering how to begin the first
chapter of this book about poetry. Outside
the window a woman is contentedly kneeling
on the upturned brown earth of her tulip-bed,
patting lovingly with her trowel as she covers
the bulbs for next spring's blossoming. Does
she know Katharine Tynan's verses about
"Planting Bulbs"? Probably not. But I find
myself dropping the procrastinating pen, and
murmuring some of the lines:

"Setting my bulbs a-row

In cold earth under the grasses,
Till the frost and the snow

Are gone and the Winter passes --

. . . . . . .

"Turning the sods and the clay

I think on the poor sad people
Hiding their dead away

In the churchyard, under the steeple.

-3-