No More Learning

The story of Launcelot and his companions. 4. The story of the Grail and the passing of Arthur. The whole is "a great work which he has worthily accomplished. " His version of the knightly stories is beautifully simple in its art, studied anew from the old romantic sources, told with some amplifications but always with restraint and with a fine feeling for the dignity of the material. — Chicago Evening Post.
103
Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur. Poems. Oxford, 1929.
The essential qualities of these poems are melody, picturesqueness and ideal tenderness. —Booklist.
His music is always perfectly clear in its modulation, simple in its accent and yet is full always of delightful surprises. His preoccupation
. . . He sees man beset by his own character, which
Roland, Chanson de. The song of Roland; tr. into English verse by Leonard Bacon. Yale, 1914.
is the spirit of man.
is fate. . . . His is rather a tragic world, generally a deeply tragic world. —John Drinkwater.
105
106
Chatto, 1924.
newly tr. with an introd. by Jessie Crosland.
This "Song of Roland" is the greatest of the "Chansons de Geste" celebrating the heroic achievements of the legendary Charlemagne and his Paladins of France.
107
Rossetti, Christina Georgina. Poetical works. Macmillan, 1904.
One of the most perfect poets of the age. —Edmund Gosse.
She has a faultless sense of rhythm, a delicate ear for the modulation of verse, an endless variety of metre and economy of phrase. She is past master of the short song. —E. B. Reed, condensed.
108
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Poems and translations,
1870. Oxford, 1913.
Color, romance, mystery, subtlety and a superlative turn for style
inform his work whether as poet or painter, and he was, without doubt, the greatest of all poetical translators of poetry. —Andrew Lang.
1850-
22 POETRY AND POETS
109
Russell, George William ("A. E. "). Collected poems. 2d ed. Macmillan, 1926.
In "A. E. " we have a poet who walks, as surely as Blake walked, in a world whose gates are opened wide but which is yet all but incompre hensible save to the few. . . . "A. E. " in all his vestments of iridescent colors and jewels has his great moments, but the poet reveals himself most clearly in the simpler garb. —Athenaeum.
110 Sagas.
Ill
Saga of Grettir the Strong; a story of the eleventh century; tr. by George Ainslie Wright. (Everyman) Dent,
1913. 112
The sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald the Tyrant (Harald Haardraada). Williams and Norgate, 1911.
113
Stories and ballads of the far past ; tr. from the Norse with introd. and notes by N. Kershaw. Cambridge, 1921.
This is the great story of the north, which should be to all our race what the tale of Troy was to the Greeks —to all our race first, and after wards when change of the world has made our race nothing but a name of what has been —a story, too—then should it be to those who come after us no less than the tale of Troy has been to us. —Preface to Story of the Volsungs.
114
Sandburg, Carl. Selected poems ; ed. by Rebecca West. Har- court, 1926.
One feels in all these poems a true and deep emotion of love as the central controlling motive —love of the prairie country, the prairie towns and city and the people who struggle through toilsome lives there. It is this which gives richness to Sandburg's music. —Harriet Monroe.
The Greeks used to say that Homer was the greatest of men who made poetry and Sappho the greatest of women. . . . Her poems were lyrics. The few we have of them show great power and feeling. —The winged horse.
The story of the Volsungs and Niblungs, with certain songs from the Elder Edda; tr. by Eirik Magnusson and William Morris. Scott, 1888.
115 Sappho.
The fragments of the lyrical poems of Sappho; ed. by Edgar Lobel. Oxford, 1927.
116
THE CHOSEN POETS : TEXTS 23
Scott, Sir Walter. Poetical works; ed. by F. T. Palgrave.
Scott can never die till men grow up into manhood without ever having been boys. He came with poems of which the music seemed to gallop like thundering hoofs and ringing bridles of a rushing, border troop. — Andrew Lang.
117
Shakespeare, William. The Oxford Shakespeare; ed. by
W. J. Craig. Oxford, 1905.
A scholarly text based on the early quartos and first folio, very well printed. Perhaps the most attractive of the single-volume editions.
118
Works ; ed. by W. G. Clark and W. A. Wright.
ed. ) Macmillan, 1891.
Macmillan, 1866.
(Globe ed. )
He was the last minstrel. . . . For my part I hope and think that
Today there is no sign that his fame will lessen. His marvellous
phrases are part of everyday English speech, his plays help us to know and judge life, his men and women dwell with us as people of our own time. —The winged horse.
119
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Poetical works; ed. by Edward
Dowden. (Globe ed. ) Macmillan, 1890.
The restless spirit that would not be caged himself and tried to sing the world into a love of freedom. Through the beauty of his poetry Shelley planted in the hearts of men a bright restlessness that still fires youth urging it to some higher and purer endeavor. —The winged horse.
120 Sophocles.
Jebb.
The seven dramas that remain give us specimens of grace and pathos that have no equal. . . . Under his guidance the Athenian stage en nobled life with a series of touching and loving figures. —A. J. Grant.
Tragedies; tr. into English prose by Sir R. C. Cambridge, 1904.
121
Spenser, Edmund. Works; ed. by R. Morris.
Macmillan, 1895.
(Globe ed. )
The two great gifts that Spenser brought to English poetry might be summarized as a sensuous conception of beauty and a personal con ception of poetry. —Herbert Read.
122
Stephens, James. Collected poems. Macmillan, 1926.
Nobody has ever written simpler poetry. . . . A bird's song, the cry of a snared rabbit and the vital, overwhelming desire to release the crooked windings of goat's path on the side of hill—these and such
(Globe
a
a
it,
24 POETRY AND POETS
as these are his themes. . . . He is an elf among the modern poets. — Edward Davison.
123
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Complete poems. Scribner, 1923.
They are quite unprofessional, written not for fame and scarcely for art, but rather for the sake of love and friendship. So they are full of his individuality . . . they are pure expressions of his very self, fragments of autobiography which no future chronicler of his life should disregard. — Cosmo Monkhouse.
124
Swinburne, Algernon
Charles. Selections from Swin burne; ed. by W. O. Raymond. Harcourt, 1925.
He is a great lyric and elegiac poet, a fountain of fiery verse and he has stamped forever with his imperial genius some of the universal themes of human feeling, love and death, childhood and liberty, sunrise and the sea. —John Bailey.
125
Ten Greek plays; tr. by Gilbert Murray and others, with an introd. by Lane Cooper. Oxford, 1930.
The first collection in one volume of the principal dramas of Soph ocles, Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes.
126
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. Works; with notes by the author; ed. by Hallam, Lord Tennyson. (Globe ed. ) Macmillan, 1896.
In magical felicity of expression, meaning, music, picture, melting into one, he is with the most perfect poets of the world.
In the coinage of phrases and lines which become the currency of common speech, he ranks in English after Shakespeare and Pope. — C. L. Moore.
127
Theocritus, Bion and Moschus ; rendered into English prose,
with an introductory essay by A. Lang. Macmillan, 1901. 128
tr. into English verse by Arthur S. Way. Cambridge, 1913.
The last of all the perfect voices of Hellas: after him no man saw life with eyes so steady and so mirthful. —Andrew Lang.
129
Thompson, Francis. Selected poems; with biographical note by Wilfrid Meynell. Lane, 1908.
A true poet, one of a small band. —George Meredith.
130
THE CHOSEN POETS : TEXTS 25
Troubadour poets; selections from eight troubadours; tr.
from the Provencal, with introd. and notes by Barbara
Smythe. Oxford, 1925.
Poets writing in Provengal began to make songs of war and spring
. . . It was a new poetry they made, lovelier than any of and love. —
the Northern alliterative poems. The winged horse. 131
Virgil.
by John Addington Symonds. McKay, 1900.
Virgil is the perfect artist, dealing considerately with a difficult mat ter, melting a reluctant language in the sevenfold furnace of an intense imagination, forging and tempering, retempering and reforging till the last trace of imperfection disappears. The finished work carries the result of all the labor, but it is transformed into beauty. —/. IV. Mackail.
132
Aeneids ; done into English verse by William Morris. Longmans, 1875.
Not only a remarkable poem, but one of the most important criticisms ever made on Virgil. Mr. Morris, who alone has given us the Virgilian sweetness, keeps as closely to the original as Conington himself. —J. W.
Mackail.
133
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of grass ; abridged edition with an
introd. by Emory Holloway. Doubleday, 1926.
His first and most obvious service to poetic art was his insistence on freedom of form—his rejection of the usually accepted English metrics, and his success in writing great poems, without their aid. His second was the rejection of cliches, including archaic diction and so-called poetic phrasing. His third service, his reassertion of the ancient conception of the poet as a prophet, and of poetry, as religion, as an ecstatic expression of faith. —Harriet Monroe.
134
Wordsworth, William. Complete poetical works.
bridge ed. ) Houghton, 1904.
Works ; tr. into English prose by John Conington ; ed.
What Wordsworth does to us is to assuage, to reconcile, to fortify.
. . . [He] has the skill to lead us, so long as we yield ourselves to his influence, into inner moods of settled peace . . . to give us quietness, strength, steadfastness and purpose, whether to do or to endure. —John Morley.
135
Poems : chosen and ed. by Matthew Arnold. Macmillan, 1879.
I by no means say that it contains all which in Wordsworth's poems is interesting. But it contains, I think, everything, or nearly everything, which may best serve him with the majority of lovers of poetry, nothing which may disserve him. —Preface.
(Cam
26 POETRY AND POETS
136
Yeats, William Butler. Poetical works. 2v. Macmillan,
1906, 1912.
Above all he arouses in us the image of a window, like Keats's magic casement, opening upon perilous seas and strange vistas wherein may be discovered the cloudy figures of Deirdre, Dana, Cuchulain, Diarmid and Grania. —James Huneker.
137
His purest successes are like nothing else in English poetry in the
Selected poems. Macmillan, 1921. that they wear. —Darrell Figgis.
II. ANTHOLOGIES
The poet doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the first give you a cluster
of grapes, that, full of that taste, you may
long to pass further. —Sir Philip Sidney.
138
Alden, Raymond Macdonald, ed. Poems of the English
race. Scribner, 1921.
Intended to show sufficiently the forms and themes to serve the needs and pleasures of younger readers.
139
Andrews, Clarence Edward, ed. Poetry of the nineties;
with an introductory essay ; ed. by C. E. Andrews and M. O.
Percival. Harcourt, 1926.
Gives a representation of Hardy, Kipling, Yeats, "A. E. " and others of the greater poets and gathers from various sources examples of the lesser romantics.
140
Appleton, William Hyde, ed. Greek poets in English verse,
by various hands. Houghton, 1893.
141
Ault, Norman, ed. Elizabethan lyrics. Longmans, 1925.
Collected from many sources, arranged according to the date at which each poem became known, it shows the development of lyric poetry throughout the Elizabethan time.
142
Auslander, Joseph, ed. The winged horse anthology; ed. by
Joseph Auslander and Frank Ernest Hill. Doubleday, 1929.
A companion volume, illustrating and illuminating the authors' de lightful story of the development of English poetry, The winged horse.
beauty
143
ANTHOLOGIES 27
Bridges, Robert, ed. Chilswell book of English poetry. Long mans, 1924.
A distinguished anthology by a distinguished editor, gathered with thought of children but containing no distinctly children's poetry. It will be enjoyed by the young of all ages.
144
ed. The spirit of man ; an anthology in English and
French from the philosophers and poets. Longmans, 1916.
The most beautiful small anthology that we have handled since The golden treasury first came our way. In no selection of the kind since Palgrave's have we found notes at the close fuller of light and leading — Saturday Review.
145
Burrell, Arthur, ed. Book of heroic verse. Dutton, 1912.
(Everyman)
It strives to show that heroic verse is verse dealing with heroes, heroic characters, heroic acts, quite irrespective of the nationality or century of the actors themselves. . . . The hero is always in the minor ity; an heroic majority is unthinkable. This gives to heroic verse its sting and stimulus. —Introduction.
146
Child, Francis James, ed. English and Scottish popular ballads ; ed. by Helen Child Sargent and George Lyman Kitt- redge. Houghton, 1904.
The present volume is neither a new edition of the collection [in five volumes] nor a substitute for it. It affords a conspectus of English and Scottish ballad literature which, it is hoped, may be useful to the gen eral reader. —Preface.
147
De la Mare, Walter, ed. Come hither ; a collection of rhymes
for all ages. Knopf, 1923.
Come hither with its admirable choice and its incomparable body of notes is a living history of English lyric from Chaucer to J. C. Squire. — R. E. Roberts.
148
Dole, Nathan Haskell, ed. The Greek poets ; an anthology.
Crowell, 1904.
Selections from the greater Greeks in the best obtainable translations.
149
Chosen from the great Roman poets in the best translations.
The Latin poets ; an anthology. Crowell, 1905.
28 POETRY AND POETS
150
Drinkwater, John, ed. An anthology of English verse.
Houghton, 1924.
A charming small anthology of English poetry from Chaucer to the present in which "the aim is to give to the reader nothing but the pure joy of reading good poetry. "
151
ed. Twentieth century poetry ; ed. by John Drinkwater, Henry Seidel Canby and William Rose Benet. Houghton, 1930.
They have approached their task with love, skill and restraint. . . . The book is full of beautiful things which one reads for themselves alone. —Alfred Kreymborg.
152
ed. The way of poetry ; an anthology for younger read
ers. Houghton, 1922.
A selection from the greater poets from Shakespeare until today. The introduction gives the poet-critic's own idea of what poetry is and how it is made.
153
Everett, William, ed. The Italian poets since Dante, accom
panied by verse translations. Scribner, 1904.
Presents a little known and delightful literature by means of critical and biographical sketches with verse translations of specimen poets. — A. L. A. catalog, 1926.
154
Gayley, Charles Mills, ed. Poetry of the people ; enl. ed. ;
ed. by C. M. Gayley and Martin C. Flaherty. Ginn, 1920.
A compact body not necessarily of the most highly polished or artistic poems in the English tongue but of those which are at once most simple, most hearty, most truly characteristic of the people, their tradi tion and patriotic spirit. — Preface.
155
Johnson, Reginald Brimley, ed. A book of British Ballads. (Everyman) Dutton, 1912.
156
Lang, Andrew, ed. A collection of ballads. Chapman, 1897.
Chiefly chosen for their romantic charm, and for the spirit of the border raids which they record.