Poems Chosen by Boys and Girls

Arranged by Fowler Wright
and Crompton Rhodes

Basil Blackwell
1925

Preface

THE poems in this anthology have been chosen, not by a man or woman, but by ten thousand boys and girls. This needs an explanation.

        Through the pages of Poetry an appeal was made to find out the poems which had given the highest delight, the deepest joy, to boys and girls. The appeal was directed to those teachers who love poetry and have transmitted the love of poetry to their boys and girls. At once it received the cordial sympathy and support of the entire educational Press and a generous response from teachers in every type of school, public and private, primary and secondary, urban and rural. With singular generosity, these lovers of poetry placed at the disposal of the Editors the wisdom and experience of years, often with hundreds of children in several schools. Ten thousand is, indeed, too low a figure to cover the number of boys and girls who are actual and ultimate collaborators in this anthology; and to those teachers who contributed these most valuable essays and lists of poems the warm thanks of the Publishers and Editors are rendered.

        The number of poems by contemporary authors is interesting. Many essays showed that the teachers, while not neglecting the earlier periods, have found that boys and girls are moved by the poetry of our own time. The Colonial and American poems are an unusual and unexpected result of the wide nature of the appeal.

        Apart from arranging the poems and negotiating copyrights, the Editors' work has been, and been only, the ensuring that the poems chosen are those which, under the guidance of lovers of poetry, have carried their beauty into the hearts of boys and girls - our esteemed collaborators in this new development of educational method.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE Editors wish to thank Miss G. Blades, B.A., assistant editor of Poetry, for her assistance in transcription and collation, and in the work of analysis entailed by the essays.

        Acknowledgments for permission to reprint are due to Mrs. Allingham (for William Allingham), Mrs. Katharine Tynan Hinkson, Harold Monro, Eric Pinker and Son (for Walter de la Mare), John Murray (for Robert Bridges), Chatto and Windus (for Robert Louis Stevenson), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Hilton Young, Wilfred Meynell (for the late Alice Meynell), A. P. Watt and Son (for William Rutler Yeats), Messrs. Macmillan (for T. E. Browne and Rudyard Kipling), R. C. Lehmann, Esq., Sir William Watson, Messrs. Angus and Robertson of Sydney (for Will H. Ogilvie), Lady Newbolt (for Sir Henry Newbolt), William H. Davies, Hilaire Belloc, John Drinkwater, the Merton Press, Ltd. (for Constance A. Renshaw and Anita Moor), John Masefield, Sidgwick and Jackson (for Rupert Brooke).

CONTENTS

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