This book has been compiled in order that boys and girls, already
perhaps familiar with the great classics of the English speech, may
also know something of the newer poetry of their own day. Most of the
writers are living, and the rest are still vivid memories among us,
while one of the youngest, almost as these words are written, has gone
singing to lay down his life for his country's cause. Although no
definite chronological limit has been set, and Meredith at least began
to write in the middle of the nineteenth century, the intention has
been to represent mainly those poetic tendencies which have become
dominant as the influence of the accepted Victorian masters has grown
weaker, and from which the poetry of the future, however it may
develope, must in turn take its start. It may be helpful briefly to
indicate the sequence of themes. Man draws his being from the heroic
Past and from the Earth his Mother; and in harmony with these he must
shape his life to what high purposes he may. Therefore this gathering
of poems falls into three groups. {viii} First there are poems of
History, of the romantic tale of the world, of our own special
tradition here in England, and of the inheritance of obligation which
that tradition imposes upon us. Naturally, there are some poems
directly inspired by the present war, but nothing, it is hoped, which
may not, in happier days, bear translation into any European tongue.
Then there come poems of the Earth, of England again and the longing of
the exile for home, of this and that familiar countryside, of woodland
and meadow and garden, of the process of the seasons, of the "open
road" and the "wind on the heath," of the city, its deprivations and
its consolations. Finally there are poems of Life itself, of the moods
in which it may be faced, of religion, of man's excellent virtues, of
friendship and childhood, of passion, grief, and comfort. But there is
no arbitrary isolation of one theme from another; they mingle and
inter-penetrate throughout, to the music of Pan's flute, and of Love's
viol, and the bugle-call of Endeavour, and the passing-bell of Death.
May, 1915.
{ix}