POEMS NEW AND OLD

PRESS NOTICES

Mr. Freeman's landscapes have an individuality which entitles him to his own place as a poet of nature.... The appreciation of his lofty ardours, his desolate landscapes and his strange, though beautiful, rhythms and forms of verse, is not one which springs up instantly in the mind; but once it has arisen it does not diminish.—New Statesman.

I think that whatever limitations our age and our poetry may have, Mr. Freeman's poetry, and much else that is now being written, will find in all succeeding generations readers to whom it will give companionship and comfort.—Mr. J.C. Squire, in Land and Water.

This book must be read steadily through; quotation can reveal little of its scope, its richness.... When a man, in poems that are clearly fragments of autobiography, thus surrenders to the world the life of his spirit, the beauty of what he writes is inseparable from its truth. Truth endures, and a prophet would have a sad foreboding of posterity if he did not believe that of this day's poets Mr. Freeman will not be among the forgotten.—Times Literary Supplement.

This rarefied air is something to which the reader must adjust himself; but he finds the process of adjustment made easy by a peculiar fascination in the atmosphere which Mr. Freeman creates. If it is aloof from ordinary experience, it is by so much the more individual; and in it there are to be found thrills and feelings, an understanding of a particular aspect of nature, which have not hitherto been reported in poetry—Westminster Gazette.

POEMS NEW AND OLD

By John Freeman

London:
Selwyn and Blount, Ltd.
21, York Buildings, Adelphi, W.C. 2
1920

NOTE.

With the exception of two or three poems which have appeared in newspapers, or in an anthology entitled Twelve Poets, the verses in the first part of this volume have not hitherto been printed. The second part contains Memories of Childhood and Other Poems, and the third part retrieves many verses from Presage of Victory (1916), Stone Trees (1916), Fifty Poems (1911) and Twenty Poems (1909). Chronological order has not been carefully observed, or avoided, in the arrangement of the third part, but the earlier pieces will easily be distinguished by those who may wish to distinguish them.

CONTENTS

PART I

• The Evening Sky
• Beechwood
• Thy Hill Leave Not
• The Caves
• I Will Ask
• In Those Old Days
• The Ash
• Imagination
• No More Adieu
• The Visit
• Travelling
• The Song of the Forest
• Out of the East

PART II

• The Wakers
• Memories of Childhood:
  • I.--Childhood Calls
  • II.--The Answer
  • III.--The First House
  • IV.--The Other House
  • V.--The Fire
  • VI.--The Kite
  • VII.--The Chair
  • VIII.--The Swing
  • IX.--Fear
  • X.--The Streets
  • XI.--When Childhood Died