POEMS

FOR STUDENTS

EDITED BY

S. S. SEWARD, JR.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Οὐ πολλὰ

αλλά πολύ

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

PREFACE

To stumble unexpectedly upon a poem, or a volume of poems, with the sudden thrill of discovery, to wander among the works of the poet as one seeking the face of a friend in a crowd,"-this is the approach to poetry that all agree brings the happiest results. That poems may be profitably "studied," however, is not universally acknowledged. This is wholly natural; for treatment too vague is obviously likely to be unstimulating, and treatment too pedantic is sure to kill spontaneous interest. This volume is compiled with a full realization of these besetting dangers, yet in the conviction that poetry can be studied with profit. Furthermore, it attempts to give some concrete suggestions toward the realization of this ideal.

It should first be explained that the greatest encouragement for the compilation of these poems came from the recent action of the National Conference on College Entrance Examinations, introducing lyric and shorter narrative poems among the types of literature to be studied in the schools. I have based the contents of this volume, therefore, upon certain recommendations of the Conference, the fourth Book of the Golden Treasury, a selected list of Browning's poems, and several narrative poems. Naturally, the

following of a list made out by others has resulted in a table of contents that does not represent in all cases my own free choice; but I have supplemented the poems recommended by the Conference with others,—all the old ballads, for example, and the poems in playful mood, in the hope that each user of the volume may find scope in which to choose and reject as he sees fit. These are the conditions, then; and the purpose is to suggest a way of approaching poetry. What this way is may best be understood by examining the plan of editing.

In the first place, I have arranged the poems in groups according to subject, or mood, or perhaps form, a grouping that does not attempt to be wholly logical, but one which makes it easy for a reader 'who has found something that pleases him to look near it for more of the same kind. Is not the natural grouping of poems according to the thing that they express, rather than the writer or literary period that produced them? And is not the transition easier from a sonnet of Shakspere to one of Wordsworth than from Milton's sonnet, On the Late Massacre in Piedmont to L'Allegro or to Lovelace's To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars?

In the notes I have had a double purpose. I have tried to make the poems more real by telling how and when certain ones were written, or by recounting such circumstances as associate them interestingly with the lives of their authors. In the case of some of the most important poems I have introduced interpretation

comment, the aim of which-such as there is of itis to be not so much a piecemeal explanation of details as an indication of some significant aspect of the poem as a whole. Even where, as in the longer poems, words and allusions must be explained, I have, whenever convenient, grouped details of a single kind together, so that the unity of impression may be impaired as little as possible.

Following the notes are a series of "Suggested Studies." These presuppose some familiarity with the poems individually, and point the way toward comparative study. Here generalization enters; and here, consequently, difficulty begins. But in most cases the generalization is either supplied or frankly indicated, and the student's object should be to verify it by the concrete instance. It is of little moment whether the student discovers his generalizations for himself: it is of the greatest importance that he realize that no generalization has meaning or validity for him unless he can test it concretely by his own experience. The studies suggested are few in number, but they can be supplemented or adapted freely at will.

Finally comes the "General Survey," in which are reviewed certain of the larger aspects of poetry illustrated by this volume. Its purpose is to lead to some understanding of a few simple principles of poetry, its scope, its varieties, its ways of transmuting life into art. Discussion of these matters in the abstract, as matters of theory, may be plausible and interesting, but is not sufficient. It has seemed to