A CLUSTER OF GRAPES

A BOOK OF TWENTIETH CENTURY POETRY

By

GALLOWAY KYLE

"Hee doth not onely shew the way, as will entice anie man to enter into it: nay he doth as if your journey should lye through a faire vineyard, at the verie first, give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste, you may long to passe further."

LONDON: ERSKINE MACDONALD
1914

The contents of this volume are copyright and may not be reproduced without the permission of the respective authors and publishers.

PREFACE

If the existence and contents of this book require any explanation, the compiler may adopt the words of a famous defender of poetry:

These excellent words of Sir Philip Sidney give the reason and scope of this collection of examples of the poetry of the present century. No attempt at arbitrary classification or labelling has been made; it is not intended to show that any poet, deliberately or otherwise, is a Neo-Symbolist or Paroxyst or is afflicted with any other 'ist or 'ism; it is not compiled to assert that any one group of poets is superior to any other group of poets or to poets who had the misfortune to have their corporeal existence cut short before the dawn of the twentieth century; it is not even intended to prove that good poetry is written in our time. All such purposes and particularly the latter are superfluous and may be left to dogmatic disputants who have little care for the grace and harmony of poetry.

The scheme of the Anthology is simple and without guile. It does not presuppose an abrupt period, but for the sake of convenience and in justification of its existence includes only the work of living writers produced during the present century and therefore most likely to be representative of the poetry of to-day. No editorial credit can be claimed for the selections; they are not the reflex of one individual's taste and preferences, but have been made by the writers themselves, to whom—and their respective publishers—for their cordial co-operation the collator of this distinctive volume is exceedingly grateful, not on his own account only but also on behalf of those readers to whom this volume will open out so fair a prospect that they will long to pass further, this "cluster of grapes" being one of the "lures immortal" for the rapidly increasing number of discriminating lovers of the high poetry that is the touchstone of beauty. The finest lyric work of our day needs no further introduction; the poet is his own best interpreter; but it may be added, in anticipation of adventitious criticism of the limitations of these examples, that the capacity of the present volume and the absence abroad of some potential contributors account for the non-inclusion of certain writers who otherwise would have been represented here.

GALLOWAY KYLE.

May, 1914.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CONTENTS

• A.E.:
  • Collected Poems (Macmillan), 1913.
    • Reconciliation1
    • The Man to the Angel2
    • Babylon3

• ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON:
  • Le Cahier Jaune (privately printed), 1892. Poems, 1893; Lyrics, 1895; Lord Vyet, and other Poems, 1897; The Professor and other Poems, 1900; Peace and other Poems, 1905; Collected Poems (John Lane, The Bodley Head), 1909.
    • Making Haste5
    • At Eventide6
    • In a College Garden7

• ANNA BUNSTON (Mrs de Bary):
  • Leaves from a Woman's Manuscript, 1904 (out of print); Mingled Wine (Longmans), 1909; The Porch of Paradise (Herbert & Daniel), 1911; Songs of God and Man (Herbert & Daniel), 1912; Letters of a Schoolma'am (Dent), 1913; Jephthah's Daughter (Erskine MacDonald), 1914; Mingled Wine (Cheaper re-issue, Erskine MacDonald), 1914.
    • A Mortgaged Inheritance8
    • The Wilderness9
    • Under a Wiltshire Apple Tree11

• G. K. CHESTERTON:
  • (b. 1873). Poems in Novels and the Commonwealth, the New Witness, etc.; The Wild Knight and other Poems (Richards), 1900; Browning, in "English Men of Letters" (Macmillan), 1903; Ballad of the White Horse (Methuen), 1911.
    • Sonnet with the Compliments of the Season13
    • When I came back to Fleet Street14
    • The Truce of Christmas17

• FRANCES CORNFORD:
  • Poems (Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge), 1910. Death and the Princess, a Morality (Bowes & Bowes), 1913.
    • The Princess and the Gypsies19
    • The