The ideal
Georgian Poetry
— a book which would err neither by omission nor by inclusion, and would contain the best, and only the best poems of the best, and only the best poets of the day — could only be achieved, if at all, by dint of a Royal Commission. The present volume is nothing of the kind.
I may add one word bearing on my aim in selection. Much admired modern work seems to me, in its lack of inspiration and its disregard of form, like gravy imitating lava. Its upholders may retort that much of the work which I prefer seems to them, in its lack of inspiration and its comparative finish, like tapioca imitating pearls. Either view — possibly both — may be right. I will only say that with an occasional exception for some piece of rebelliousness or even levity which may have taken my fancy, I have tried to choose no verse but such as in Wordsworth's phrase
The high and tender Muses shall accept
With gracious smile, deliberately pleased.
There are seven new-comers — Messrs. Armstrong, Blunden, Hughes, Kerr, Prewett and Quennell, and Miss Sackville-West. Thanks and acknowledgments are due to Messrs. Jonathan Cape, Chatto and Windus, R. Cobden-Sanderson, Constable, W. Collins, Heinemann, Hodder and Stoughton, John Lane, Macmillan, Martin Secker, Selwyn and Blount, Sidgwick and Jackson, and the Golden Cockerel Press; and to the Editors of
The Chapbook
,
The London Mercury
and