"yngad10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Benet Stephen Vincent)

To W. R. B.

Dedication



And so, to you, who always were
Perseus, D'Artagnan, Lancelot
To me, I give these weedy rhymes
In memory of earlier times.
Now all those careless days are not.
Of all my heroes, you endure.

Words are such silly things! too rough,
Too smooth, they boil up or congeal,
And neither of us likes emotion --
But I can't measure my devotion!
And you know how I really feel --
And we're together. There, enough, . . . !






Foreword by Chauncey Brewster Tinker



In these days when the old civilisation is crumbling beneath our feet,
the thought of poetry crosses the mind like the dear memory of things
that have long since passed away. In our passionate desire for the new era,
it is difficult to refrain oneself from the commonplace practice
of speculating on the effects of warfare and of prophesying all manner
of novel rebirths. But it may be well for us to remember that the era
which has recently closed was itself marked by a mad idealisation
of all novelties. In the literary movements of the last decade --
when, indeed, any movement at all has been perceptible -- we have witnessed
a bewildering rise and fall of methods and ideals. We were captivated
for a time by the quest of the golden phrase and the accompanying cultivation
of exotic emotions; and then, wearying of the pretty and the temperamental,
we plunged into the bloodshot brutalities of naturalism.
From the smooth-flowing imitations of Tennyson and Swinburne,
we passed into a false freedom that had at its heart a repudiation
of all law and standards, for a parallel to which one turns instinctively
to certain recent developments in the political world. We may hope
that the eager search for novelty of form and subject may have its influence
in releasing us from our old bondage to the commonplace and in broadening
the scope of poetry; but we cannot blind ourselves to the fact
that it has at the same time completed that estrangement