Standard English poems, Spenser to Tennyson

Front matter

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Preface

Not only is poetry one of the noblest and most uplifting of the arts; it is peculiarly fitted, from one aspect at least, to be the art most universally enjoyed. Few can hope to own — even to see — the greatest pictures or statues; their beauty must of necessity be monopolized by a country, or a class, while the elaborate requirements of performance keep much of the greatest music from the multitude; but the beauty of the greatest poems is spread for men's delight almost as liberally as the wonders of dawn and sunset; it is almost as free as sunlight or the stars.

Yet it is not unlikely that many of us are deceived by the very ease with which the greatest poetry can be obtained; it is not unlikely that many of us who would cross the Atlantic to see the master-works of Kaphael, and approach them in reverence and awe, would leave the master-works of Milton neglected on our shelves or glance over them with an easy selfassurance. It is easy to confuse the physical ownership of a book with the actual or spiritual possession of it; it is easy to forget that, obtainable as poetry may seem to be, it is often made inaccessible

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to us by our own limitations, and that in our reading of it "we receive but what we give." The truth is that an appreciation of poetry at once fine and liberal, capable of delighting in widely different kinds of excellence, and combining a delicate susceptibility to beauty with a vigorous intellectual grasp ; — the truth is that such a high appreciation is rarely attained even among what are called the educated classes. The first step is to recognize the difficulty of gaining this power. We shall then cease to regard great poetry as a means of casual amusement, and learn to approach it reverently, as one of the loftiest of the arts; we shall come to realize the presumption and absurdity of facile and ignorant judgments, knowing that good taste in poetry is not merely a matter of nature but of nurture. I know of nothing, at least among the arts, that is fairly comparable to poetry as a means to general culture, but I am convinced that, available as it seems, this means is far too little used. In a vast number of cases poetry fails to exert its full influence, because so many never perceive that it is a serious and even exacting subject of study. There is a prevalent impression that if we do not "like poetry," nothing can be done; and that, on the other hand, if we do "like" it, nothing further is required. Others again have a vague feeling that the pure enjoyment of a poem is marred by an endeavor to analyze and understand it ; that, because it is possible to enjoy some poems without knowing what they mean, enjoyment and understanding are in some way antagonistic. These fal-

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lacies or half-truths all tend to retard the true appreciation of poetry, and keep it out of the place it ought to hold. The power to take the greatest poems into our lives is almost invariably dependent upon a strenuous effort of mind and will, as well as upon the sympathetic response of our spirits. Poetry may speak from the heart and to the heart; it may be the apparently spontaneous expression of irrepressible feeling; but we must remember that it is also a difficult and highly technical art; that it is often the profoundest thought touched by emotion; and that it frequently demauds for its interpretation both a substantial basis of learning and an unusual penetration of mind. In a word, it is by the systematic and strenuous study of poetry, by sedulously training ourselves to view it in all its historic and human relations, by broadening and deepening our appreciation until we learn to delight in all its rich variety, its wit, satire, cleverness, and depth of thought, as well as in its beauty, color, or haunting musical cadences, ■ — it is only by this that we can hope to win from it those great benefits that it is so peculiarly fitted to bestow.

I have tried to make a collection of English verse, which should serve as an introduction to such a serious and systematic study of one of the richest and noblest poetic literatures the world has produced. I have hoped to make a book which should promote the genuine love and appreciation of English poetry by promoting a fuller understanding of it; a book which should furnish a convenient avenue of approach

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to poetry of many different styles and of many times. In this attempt I have kept before me a few simple and, as it seems to me, obvious principles.

With a few exceptions, I have given only complete poems ; believing that the practice of misrepresenting an author by extracts or fragments of poems is unjust both to the poet and his reader; a bar to the fullest enjoyment, and a discouragement to any rational method of study. In the few cases in which I have departed from this rule, I have broken it in the letter rather than in the spirit. For instance, although selections are given from the Faerie Queene, The Seasons, The Task, and Childe Harold, each of these poems has a looseness of structure which permits it to be fairly represented in this manner, if the selections are reasonably full and are carefully chosen and arranged. Three of these poems consist of a series of descriptive and meditative passages, each of which is practically complete in itself. In the Faerie Queene, the only one of these poems in which there is any approach to a continous narrative, I have connected the selections by a brief prose argument and arranged them so as to preserve the continuity of the story; I have also given in the notes the general scheme and purpose of the poem. At best the Faerie Queene is itself a gigantic fragment, marvellous in parts, but lacking in symmetrical proportion as a whole; this seems to justify the belief that Spenser can be more adequately represented by selections from his masterpiece than by some of his minor poems. On the other hand, poems of closer

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narrative structure which were too long to be given complete, such as Paradise Lost or Marmion, had to be reluctantly omitted.

Our literature is so rich in poetry that the chief perplexity which confronts the compiler of an English anthology is not what to put in, but what to leave out. In the present instance my task has been greatly simplified by the distinct object I had in view. That object was to provide a general introduction to the study of English poetry, and I felt that this end could be gained only by complying as far as possible with two distinct and sometimes conflicting requirements — that of individual excellence and of historic importance. The poems selected must have an intrinsic interest or beauty, and they, must have also an independent value as illustrations of the history of English poetry, or as examples of the various poetic forms. As my primary object was not simply to bring together the poems that I personally admired, I have invariably preferred to follow the settled judgment of time rather than my individual preference. As a rule, however, my personal liking has been in accord with this general judgment, and I have been persuaded that the opinion which has been held by successive generations of critics and readers is, in a large majority of cases, the right one. Certain poems (such as "Go, Lovely Rose" or "Shall I wasting in despair") have come to be generally accepted as representative, and the probabilities are that in such cases we may look in vain through the works of their authors for anything that will repre-

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sent them better. But even if this were not the case, the taste of an individual ought not to take precedence of the general verdict in a selection of this character; such poems should still be included, because by common consent they are poems with which every fairly cultivated person is expected to be familiar. So far, therefore, from hesitating ' to include a poem because it was famous and popular, its assured place in the literature has been a powerful argument for its admission. I could not, of course, give all the poems which a person of average cultivation should know, but I have at least tried to give nothing but those poems which are, or ought to be, indispensable.

The first requirement — that each poem should have an independent, intrinsic value — had to be reconciled with the second — that the poems should have a value as a whole by virtue of their historic continuity or their representative character. In some cases choice became a compromise between the conflicting claims of these two requirements, and a work of superior intrinsic merit had to be excluded, because it threw the book out of proportion, or because it had to make way for some work inferior in purely poetic value, but indispensable from the historic point of view. On the same principle the best example of an inferior class of verse might present claims for admission that could not be safely ignored.

My endeavor has been to make the book useful to the student of poetry not only by a chronological arrangement, but also by an intelligent division and

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grouping of the poems. The strongly marked historic periods are indicated by the main divisions of the book : within these divisions the selections have been grouped under the various authors of the period or under an especial poetic form, as the case seemed to require. So far as this arrangement allowed, the selections are given in their chronological order as nearly as it could be ascertained. The historical side has also been emphasized by giving with the text of each poem the name and dates of its author, and the date, or approximate date, of its composition or first publication, with the name, in the latter case, of the book in which it first appeared. This has been supplemented by briefly indicating in the notes the general relation which the poem and its auther hold to literary history. Formal biography has been kept within the briefest limits or dispensed with altogether, as the outward events of an author's life can be readily found elsewhere, and as there was no space for anything beyond the driest summary. In a few cases, where I had treated the matter in my Introduction to English Literature, I have referred to what I had already said rather than repeat it in an abbreviated form.

In the annotations I have tried to give such help as an average reader would be likely to require. The ideal note-maker — if there be any such — avoids no difficulty on the one hand, and intrudes nothing irrelevant or superfluous on the other, but I am fully sensible that to do this is to steer an almost impossible course. Frankly, while I regard notes as a necessity

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in a book of this character, I regret the conditions that make them indispensable. When chapels are churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces, every school and every household will be furnished with an adequate library ; every teacher of English will train his pupils in the scholarly use of books ; and every pupil will have enough leisure and enough love of learning to be his own commentator. Until then, I fear that readers must be told many things which they could with great pleasure and profit find out for themselves.

I have endeavored to give an accurate and reliable text in conformity with that of the best editions. In a very few instances I have ventured to depart from the punctuation of a standard edition, or to adopt the reading of one that seemed to me better in that particular instance, although less authoritative on the whole. The spelling of the old ballads has been left untouched, but in some of the comparatively modern poems where the differences were trifling, the spelling and capitalization have been made to conform more nearly to the present usage.

My obligations to others are so great and various that specific acknowledgment has not always been practicable or possible. The material for the notes has been drawn from many sources, and I have freely availed myself of the mass of comment that has grown up about our great classics. In many cases, where the notes dealt with matters so familiar that they may be considered common property, it seemed unnecessary to refer to the long line of editors who

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had furnished the same obvious information, but wherever I could trace my indebtedness to any particular source, especially if it were a matter of opinion or interpretation, it has been duly noted.

Beyond this, I am glad to take this opportunity of acknowledging the help I have received from many quarters in the difficult duty of selection. The number of those who have shown a kindly and practical interest in the work is so great that I must content myself with this general expression of appreciation.

For obvious reasons I have thought it desirable to exclude poems by living authors. I have done this, in spite of many temptations, except in a single instance. I trust that this one lapse will need no justification, and that the impulse which led me to conclude this collection of the glories of English poetry with Kipling's Recessional will be understood and pardoned*

Germantown, July 5, 1899.

Contents

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BALLADS.