E-text prepared by Al Haines
Transcriber's note:
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book.
POEMS OF TO-DAY:
an Anthology.
London:Published for the English Associationby Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., 1918
First issued in August, 1915;
Reprinted October, 1915; January, March,
June, September, and December, 1916;
May, July, September, October, 1917,
January, February, and July, 1918.
{vii}
PREFATORY NOTE
This book has been compiled in order that boys and girls, alreadyperhaps familiar with the great classics of the English speech, mayalso know something of the newer poetry of their own day. Most of thewriters are living, and the rest are still vivid memories among us,while one of the youngest, almost as these words are written, has gonesinging to lay down his life for his country's cause. Although nodefinite chronological limit has been set, and Meredith at least beganto write in the middle of the nineteenth century, the intention hasbeen to represent mainly those poetic tendencies which have becomedominant as the influence of the accepted Victorian masters has grownweaker, and from which the poetry of the future, however it maydevelope, must in turn take its start. It may be helpful briefly toindicate the sequence of themes. Man draws his being from the heroicPast and from the Earth his Mother; and in harmony with these he mustshape his life to what high purposes he may. Therefore this gatheringof poems falls into three groups. {viii} First there are poems ofHistory, of the romantic tale of the world, of our own specialtradition here in England, and of the inheritance of obligation whichthat tradition imposes upon us. Naturally, there are some poemsdirectly inspired by the present war, but nothing, it is hoped, whichmay not, in happier days, bear translation into any European tongue.Then there come poems of the Earth, of England again and the longing ofthe exile for home, of this and that familiar countryside, of woodlandand meadow and garden, of the process of the seasons, of the "openroad" and the "wind on the heath," of the city, its deprivations andits consolations. Finally there are poems of Life itself, of the moodsin which it may be faced, of religion, of man's excellent virtues, offriendship and childhood, of passion, grief, and comfort. But there isno arbitrary isolation of one theme from another; they mingle andinter-penetrate throughout, to the music of Pan's flute, and of Love'sviol, and the bugle-call of Endeavour, and the passing-bell of Death.
May, 1915.
{ix}
INDEX OF AUTHORS
PAGE
A. E. (GEORGE RUSSELL)
Shadows and Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
ABERCROMBIE, LASCELLES
Margaret's Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
BEECHING, H. C.
Fatherhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Prayers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
BELLOC, HILAIRE
Courtesy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
From "Dedicatory Ode" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
The South Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .