The Marchioness of Anglesey
CONTENTS
| Introduction by R. B. Cunninghame Graham | [ix] |
| [Rustic Courting]: | |
| Walking Out | [1] |
| The Shadow of Raggedstone | [3] |
| The Long Green Lanes of England | [5] |
| The Hills | [7] |
| Eastnor Churchyard | [8] |
| The Malvern Hills | [9] |
| The First Cuckoo | [11] |
| Dusk in the Lane | [12] |
| The Meeting-Place | [13] |
| By the Avon | [15] |
| Jealousy | [16] |
| In the City | [18] |
| I be Thinkin’ | [19] |
| Sunday Evening | [20] |
| The Ledbury Train | [21] |
| Jilted | [22] |
| Casend Hill | [23] |
| The Ledbury Road | [24] |
| The Call to London | [25] |
| Bredon | [27] |
| Our Dead | [28] |
| Primrose Flowers | [29] |
| Tramping | [30] |
| The Blind Ploughman | [32] |
| [Miscellaneous Poems]: | |
| When the Wind comes up the Hill | [35] |
| Peace | [36] |
| Lime-Trees | [37] |
| A Little Song | [38] |
| The Song of the Watcher | [39] |
| By the River | [41] |
| The Road to Colla | [42] |
| Prayer | [43] |
| Dawn | [45] |
| To the Earth | [46] |
| Dawn Among the Olive Groves | [48] |
| Silent Places | [49] |
| One Evening near Nice | [50] |
| Thoughts at Ajaccio | [51] |
| [Three Child-Songs]: | |
| The Thrush’s Song | [52] |
| Willow Wand | [53] |
| A Winter Song | [55] |
| Autumn in Sussex | [56] |
| Si Parva Licet Componere Magnis | [57] |
| To Italy | [59] |
| Sunday in Liguria | [60] |
| Georgetown, U.S.A. | [61] |
| On the Potomac River, U.S.A. | [63] |
| The Lost Word | [65] |
| Comparisons | [66] |
| A Fragment | [67] |
| Appreciations | [69] |
| Press Notices | [73] |
INTRODUCTION
WITH as much grace as if a monoplanist should attempt to write a preface to a book on flying for an albatross, so may a writer of mere prose attempt to pen an introduction to a book of poetry.
The bird and man both use the air, but with a difference. So do the poet and the man of prose use pen and ink.
Familiarity with tools, used in two branches of one art (or trade), is apt to prove a snare.
Music and poetry, the most ethereal of the arts upon the face of them, are in a way more mathematical than prose, for both have formulæ. Hence, their appeal goes quicker to men’s minds, and oversteps countries and languages to some degree, and makes it difficult to write about them. Of late, young poets, those who have bulked the largest in the public eye, those that the world has hailed as modern, have often been obscure. What is modernity? To be modern is to touch the senses of the age you write for. To me, a fool who owns a motor-car is just as great a fool as was a fool of the stone age.
The only true modernity is talent, and Lucian of Samosata was as modern to the full as Guy de Maupassant. The poet for whose verses I am writing this my introduction, preface, foreword, call it what you will, is one of those whose meaning he who runs may read.
Does she do well in making herself clear? I think so, for though there are those who prefer a mist of words, holding apparently that poetry should be written in Chinook, or Malagasy, this opinion must of necessity be of the nature of what Ben Jonson called a “humour.”