Chapter I: Front Matter

GEORGIAN POETRY

1911-1912

DEDICATED

TO

ROBERT BRIDGES

BY THE WRITERS

AND THE EDITOR

PREFATORY NOTE

This volume is issued in the belief that English poetry is now once again putting on a new strength and beauty.

Few readers have the leisure or the zeal to investigate each volume as it appears; and the process of recognition is often slow. This collection, drawn entirely from the publications of the past two years, may if it is fortunate help the lovers of poetry to realize that we are at the beginning of another "Georgian period" which may take rank in due time with the several great poetic ages of the past.

It has no pretension to cover the field. Every reader will notice the absence of poets whose work would be a necessary ornament of any anthology not limited by a definite aim. Two years ago some of the writers represented had published nothing; and only a very few of the others were known except to the eagerest "watchers of the skies." Those few are here because within the chosen period their work seemed to have gained some accession of power.

My grateful thanks are due to the writers who have lent me their poems, and to the publishers (Messrs Elkin Mathews, Sidgwick and Jackson, Methuen, Fifield, Constable, Nutt, Dent, Duckworth, Longmans, and Maunsel, and the Editors of 'Basileon', 'Rhythm', and the 'English Review') under whose imprint they have appeared.

E.M.

Oct. 1912.

"Of all materials for labour, dreams are the hardest; and the
artificer in ideas is the chief of workers, who out of nothing will
make a piece of work that may stop a child from crying or lead nations
to higher things. For what is it to be a poet? It is to see at a
glance the glory of the world, to see beauty in all its forms and
manifestations, to feel ugliness like a pain, to resent the wrongs of
others as bitterly as one's own, to know mankind as others know single
men, to know Nature as botanists know a flower, to be thought a fool,
to hear at moments the clear voice of God."

DUNSANY

CONTENTS

LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE
The Sale of Saint Thomas

GORDON BOTTOMLEY
The End of the World (from 'Chambers of Imagery,' 2nd series)
Babel: The Gate of God (from 'Chambers of Imagery,' 2nd series)

RUPERT BROOKE
The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
Dust
The Fish
Town and Country
Dining-room Tea

GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
The Song of Elf (a fragment from the Ballad of the White Horse)

WILLIAM H. DAVIES
The Child and the Mariner (from 'Songs of Joy')
Days too Short (from 'Songs of Joy')
In May (from 'Songs of Joy')
The Heap of Rags (from 'Songs of Joy')
The Kingfisher (from 'Farewell to Poesy')

WALTER DE LA MARE
Arabia (from 'The Listeners')
The Sleeper (from 'The Listeners')
Winter Dusk (from 'The Listeners')
Miss Loo (from 'The Listeners')
The Listeners

JOHN DRINKWATER
The Fires of God (from 'Poems of Love and Earth')

JAMES ELROY FLECKER
Joseph and Mary (from 'Forty-Two Poems')
The Queen's Song (from 'Forty-Two Poems')

WILFRID WILSON GIBSON
The Hare (from 'Fires,' Book III)
Geraniums
Devil's Edge (from 'Fires,' Book III)