Most or these verses have appeared in the papers—The Nation, New Statesman, Cambridge Magazine—to the editors of which I tender customary dues. Also, in 1917, a dozen were brought together to make a little book, Ad Familiares, of which a hundred copies were printed privately. Of these seventy were immediately distributed amongst my friends, while the remaining thirty have drifted into the hands of curious amateurs who wrote and asked for them. My stock is now exhausted; but apparently the stock of amateurs is not: for, from time to time, still reach me civil requests for a copy. What can I do? On the one hand, my vanity is outraged by the idea of people anxious but unable to read me; on the other, I am too mean to print for their benefit at my own expense. What I have done is to accept with joy an offer by the Hogarth Press to publish a complete edition of my poems—seventeen in number. Thus, in future, without being at pains to write a flattering letter, and at a trifling cost, any amateur can acquire the works of an extremely rare poet.
C. B.
[THE CARD HOUSE]
And so he laboured very hard,
Piled little card on little card
And laughed to see how well it stood,
How all his work was sure and good
And pretty as a minaret.
He shone with pleasure. "Now I'll set
A jolly cap to crown the thing."
He clapped his hands. Perhaps the fling,
Perhaps the shout was over-daring;
It toppled down while he was staring.
One had to titter, willy-nilly,
To see him look so sad and silly.
1912.