The Mercury Book Of Verse

THE MERCURY BOOK OF VERSE Being a Selection of Poems published in The London Mercury, 19191930 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SIR HENRY NEWBOLT MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTINS STREET, LONDON I 01 I ACKNOWLEDGMENT THANKS are due to the authors and their representatives who have allowed poems to be reprinted in this volume and to the following publishers Messrs. Chatto Windus for poems by C. C. Abbott, Richard Hughes, and C. K. Scott Moncricff. Messrs. Cobden-Sanderson for poems by Edmund Btunden. Messrs. Constable for Prologue, by Gordon Bottomley. Messrs. Duckworth for poems by H. Belloc and R. H. Mot tram. Messrs. Alfred Knopf for Driven, by Le Roy Macleocl. Messrs. John Lane for Now to the World, by Frank Kendon, from Poems and Sonnets. Messrs. Macrmllan for The Deer of Ireland, by Padraic Colum, from Dramatic Legends. The Oxford University Press for poems by Robert Bridges and Austin Dobson. The Poetry Bookshop for Rhyme for a Phonetician, by Frances Cornford, from Autumn Midnight. Messrs. Sidgwick Jackson for Regret for the Passing, by Edgell Rick word and Blank hire, by Frank Sidgwick, from More Verse. COPYRIGHT PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. R. CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH INTRODUCTION AN anthology is too often a mere Whos Who in poetry a catalogue of the well known, useful as an aide-memoire and a guarantee of quality. No doubt the better anthologies represent each an individual choice but even so they are not always in fallible guides Pal grave stocked the work of Tennyson and OShaughnessy overlargely Alice Meynell drew the line above Grays Elegy. By such aberrations we are driven to inquire not only whose choice is this, but upon what principle and with what range of comparisonhas it been made A preference is readily granted but is it based on popularity or prejudice, con vention or eccentricity Is the personal view the result of a broad experience and a close insight Is the eye of the anthologist poly gonal, as jhat of an insect, and has he visited all, or nearly all, of the flowers in the garden, and understood the secret virtues of their nectar To ask such questions is to formulate a very exacting demand but it is necessary to be exacting where the field of blossom is so rich. It may be that by this time it has become impossible to make any selection which should represent the shorter poems of England and yet be held in the hand. What we need then is per haps a series of periodical anthologies Poetry in the Eighties, Poetry in the Nineties, Poetry of To-day. The choice, as before, must bt a wide one it must be based on principle as well as on preference and the standard of selection must be put frankly before the reader. The present collection, as I see it, is an experiment on these lines it is the anthology of a period. The London Mercury is now in its twelfth year for 136 months it has published new verse, not in the occasional old journalistic fashion to one poet one poem and perhaps one-twentieth of a page but bountifully, as a good man gathers flowers to give to his friend two of this and three of that, and quite a handful altogether the best of the days showing, and those most likely to please a man with some knowledge of what is good. Readers who are familiar with the London Mercury and its contributors will by this time have measured accurately enough how far their own preferences corre spond to those which have been at work here. If they have notyet arrived at this equation they have only to turn to the index of poets represented. This shows no fewer than 106 names, and though there are now, it is calculated, more than 1000 poets flowering among us in full volume, the London Mercury s list, though it might be enlarged, could not be surpassed. It may fairly claim to be the harvest of a successful as well as a liberal choice and it does claim to have been made with complete in difference to prejudice, either personal or conventional...