Marlborough
and other poems
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, Manager
London: FETTER LANE. E.C.
Edinburgh: 100 PRINCES STREET
New York: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Bombay, Calcutta and Madras: MACMILLAN AND Co., Ltd.
Toronto: J. M. DENT AND SONS, Ltd.
Tokyo: THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
All rights reserved
Marlborough
and other poems
by
CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY
LATE OF MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE
SOMETIME CAPTAIN IN THE SUFFOLK REGIMENT
Third edition
with illustrations in prose
Cambridge:
at the University Press
1916
Published, January 1916
Second edition, slightly enlarged, February 1916
Reprinted, February, April, May 1916
Third edition, with illustrations in prose, October 1916
PREFACE
WHAT was said concerning the author in the preface to the first edition may be repeated here. He was born at Old Aberdeen on 19 May 1895. From 1900 onwards his home was in Cambridge. He was at Marlborough College from September 1908 till December 1913, when he was elected to a scholarship at University College, Oxford. After leaving school he spent a little more than six months in Germany, returning home on the outbreak of war. He was gazetted Second Lieutenant in the Seventh (Service) Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment in August 1914, Lieutenant in November, and Captain in the following August. His battalion was sent to France on 30 May. He was killed in action near Hulluch on 13 October 1915. “Being made perfect in a little while, he fulfilled long years.”
Many readers have asked for further information about the author or contributions from his pen. I am not able to give all that is asked for; but in this edition I have done what I can to meet the wishes of my correspondents by appending to the poems a certain number of illustrations in prose. With the exception of a few sentences from an early essay, these prose passages are all taken from his letters to his family and friends. They have been selected as illustrating some idea or subject mentioned in the poems and prominent in his own mind. But the relevancy is not always very close; the moods of the moment are sometimes expressed rather than matured judgments; and it has to be remembered that what was written was not intended for other eyes than those of the person to whom it was addressed.