In his Preface he speaks of these poems as having been written during
the last sixteen or seventeen years, though the greater number were
written very recently, and many during his last illness. _An Epitaph_
and _On an Anniversary_ show how early the expectation of death came to
him, for they were made long ago. But the book as a whole is a farewell,
written when life began to slip from him. He was a reserved man, and
wished no doubt by a vague date to hide when still living what he felt
and thought, from those about him. I asked one of the nurses in the
hospital where he died if he knew he was dying, and she said, 'He may
have known it for months, but he would not have spoken of it to anyone.'
Even the translations of poems that he has made his own by putting them
into that melancholy dialect of his, seem to express his emotion at the
memory of poverty and the approach of death. The whole book is of a kind
almost unknown in a time when lyricism has become abstract and
impersonal.