No Poet represented in this book was over fifty when, in 1919, I began
to compile it. The eldest of them all was born in 1870.
Many good and some great living poets are therefore missing from its
pages. Nothing is here by Mr Hardy or Mr Bridges, by Mr A. E. Housman,
Mr Yeats, _Æ,_ Mr Binyon, Mr Hewlett, Mr Herbert Trench, Mr Gosse, Mr
Austin Dobson, Mr Doughty, Mr Kipling, Sir Henry Newbolt, Mrs Meynell,
Mrs Woods, Mr Wilfrid Blunt, and others whose names must appear in
any comprehensive anthology from living poets. The date, 1870, was
arbitrarily chosen: so would any other date have been. But some date I
had to fix, for my object was to illustrate what many of us think an
exceptional recent flowering.
I do not propose to analyse the tendencies, in idea and in method,
exhibited in the poems here collected. These things are always
better seen at a distance; and anyhow the materials are here for
the production of an analysis by the reader himself, if he is eager
for one. But I will express one opinion, and call attention to one
phenomenon. The opinion is that the majority of the poems in this book
have merit and that many more could have been printed without lowering
the standard. And the phenomenon is the simultaneous appearance--the
result of underlying currents of thought and feeling--of a very large
number of poets who write only or mainly in lyrical forms. Several
living poets of the highest repute have won their reputation solely on
short poems, and there are, and have been, a very large number indeed
who have written one or two good poems.
The better production of our generation has been mainly lyrical and
it has been widely diffused. Where is the ambitious work on a large
scale? Where is the twentieth century poet who is fulfilling the usual
functions of the greatest poets: to display human life in all its range
and variety, or to exercise a clear and powerful influence on the
thought of mankind with regard to the main problems of our existence?
These questions are asked; possibly Echo may give its traditional and
ironic answer.
There are several observations, however, which should be made. One is
that the great doctrinal poets have not always become widely recognised
as such in their own prime, their general vogue being posthumous.
Another is that we cannot possibly tell what a poet now living and
young may or may not do before he dies. But though I have my own views
on this subject I do not think that the age, even if admitted to be
purely lyrical, stands in need of defence. It is of no use asking a
poetical renascence to conform to type, for there isn't any type.
There are marked differences in the features of all those English
poetical movements which have chiefly contributed to the body of our
"immortal" poetry. In the Elizabethan age we had the greatest diversity
of production: a multitude of great and small men, with much genius,
or but a spark of it blown to life by the favourable wind, produced
works in every form and on every scale. The age of Herbert and Vaughan,
of Crashaw, Herrick, Marvell, Carew, Suckling, Lovelace, Corbet,
Habington, is memorable almost solely for its lyrical work. The era
of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats was an age during
which a vast amount of great poetry was written by a few great poets;
there was very little healthy undergrowth. Should our literary age be
remembered by posterity solely as an age during which fifty men had
written lyrics of some durability for their truth and beauty, it would
not be remembered with contempt. It is in that conviction that I have
compiled this anthology.
It is irritating to feel that even within its own limits it does
not appear to myself--not to mention others--as good or as nearly
representative as it might have been. Permission could not be obtained
to print Mr Masefield's _Biography_ and his _August 1914,_ which I
personally happen to prefer to any of his shorter works. Since the time
in 1919-20 when I was compiling the book two volumes have come out from
which I should like to have made large seleetions: Edmund Blunden's
_The Waggoner_ and the late Wilfrid Owen's _Poems._ Each of these poets
is inadequately represented here; and a few things by others, who do
not appear here at all, came to my notice when it was too late to put
them in.
I have to thank the living poets from whose works I have drawn for
permitting me to use everything I wanted. I am grateful to Mrs
Brooke and Rupert Brooke's literary executor, Mr Edward Marsh (whose
"Georgian" collections have been a great stimulus and help to me) for
permission to use a selection from Brooke; to Mrs J. E. Flecker for
poems by her husband; to Lady Desborough for the poems by her son,
Julian Grenfell; to Lord Dunsany for the poems by Francis Ledwidge; to
Mrs Thomas Macdonagh and Mrs Joseph Plunkett for the poems by their
husbands; to Mrs Owen for her son Wilfrid Owen's _Strange Meeting;_
to Professor W. R. Sorley for the poems by his son, Charles Sorley;
to Lady Glenconner for those by her son, Edward Wyndham Tennant; to
Mrs Edward Thomas for the poems (published too late for him ever to
know-how people would admire them) by Edward Thomas.
Finally, almost every publisher in the kingdom has assisted the book
with permission to reprint copyright poems. The full list of publishers
and works is as follows: Messrs Bell (Edward L. Davison, _Poems_);
Blackwell (E. Wyndham Tennant, _Worple Flit_); Burns' Oates and
Washbourne (G. K. Chesterton, _Poems_); Cambridge University Press (C.
H. Sorley, _Marlborough and other Poems_); Chatto and Windus (Robert
Nichols, _Ardours and Endurances, Aurelia,_ Wilfred Owen, _Poems_);
Collins (F. Brett Young, _Poems_); Constable (Gordon Bottomley,
_Annual of New Poetry,_ 1917, W. de la Mare, _Collected Poems_);
Dent (G. K. Chesterton, _The Wild Knight_); Duckworth (H. Belloc,
_Poems,_ D. H. Lawrence, _Love Poems,_ Sturge Moore, _Collected Poems_);
Fifield (W. H. Davies, _Collected Poems_); Heffer (A. Y. Campbell,
_Poems_); Heinemann (Robert Graves, _Fairies and Fusiliers,_ John
Masefield, _Lollingdon Downs,_ Siegfried Sassoon, _The Old Huntsman,
Counter-Attack, War Poems_); Herbert Jenkins (Francis Ledwidge,
_Poems_); Lane (Lascelles Abercrombie, _Emblems of Love_); Macmillan
(Ralph Hodgson, _Poems,_ James Stephens, _Songs from the Clay_);
Elkin Mathews (Gordon Bottomley, _Chambers of Imagery,_ James Joyce,
_Chamber Music,_ Sturge Moore, _The Vinedresser_); Maunsel and Roberts
(Padraic Colum, _Poems,_ Seumas O'Sullivan, _The Twilight People,_
Joseph Plunkett, _Poems_); Methuen (G. K. Chesterton, _The Ballad of
the White Horse,_ W. H. Davies, _The Bird of Paradise,_ I. A. Williams,
_Poems_); Palmer (Francis Burrows, _The Green Knight_); Poetry Bookshop
(Frances Cornford, _Poems,_ Harold Monro, _Children of Love, Strange
Meetings_); Seeker (Martin Armstrong, _The Buzzards,_ Maurice Baring,
_Poems_ 1914-1919, J. E. Flecker, _Collected Poems,_ Robert Graves,
_Country Sentiment,_ Edward Shanks, _The Queen of China_); Selwyn and
Blount (Robin Flower, _Hymensea,_ John Freeman, _Poems New and Old,_
Edward Thomas, _Collected Poems_); Sidgwick & Jackson (Edmund Blunden,
_The Waggoner,_ Rupert Brooke, _Collected Poems,_ John Drinkwater,
_Olton Pools,_ R. C. K. Ensor, _Odes,_ Ivor Gurney, _Severn and Somme,_
R. Macaulay, _The Two Blind Countries,_ W. J. Turner, _The Hunter, The
Dark Fire_); Talbot Press and Fisher Unwin (T. Macdonagh, _Poems_).