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 PREFACE.

HE aim of the "Echoes from East and West" is to produce on an English gramophone some of the finest records of Indo-European songs. It is to wake up at a grind the "music of the moon" that slept "in the plain eggs" of that "nightingale enveloped in the mist of ages," the primitive Aryan of Mid-Asia, whose natural and adopted offspring are scattered over five continents. It is to bring together the voices of some of the Indic, Persic, Hellenic, Italic, Romance, and Teutonic makers of melodies, so that the only notable nestlings here silent are those that chirped through Celtic and Slavonic tongues. It is also to show that a true song floats above race and age and land and may be heard by all. Thanks to the strenuous devotion of eminent scholars, the Muses of Comparative Philology and Comparative Mythology have in recent years lightened up the path of the seeker of poetry and prosody. I should, therefore, invite some far abler man, some future Aryan Palgrave, some soul ever athirst for Beauty and anhungered for Truth, to roam farther and farther afield through literatures and come back with fresher and fresher songs for real lovers of poetry in all English speaking lands. In the meantime I hope that the public would kindly receive this humble collection of