only when the verdict of Time has been given, — it is hoped may thus have been gained. But a personal element always remains, too often refusing to be excluded; especially in case of early favourites, and the haunting music which has seized on our youth, and passed perhaps physically into the very nerves or whatever may be that mysterious organ of Memory which transacts its secret and inexplicable life within the soul's furthest recesses.

The selection has been brought, near as I can venture, to our own day. But, especially in case of those later singers whose course is not yet run, it is all too soon even to attempt a valuation. Many indeed and bright are the blossoms springing up among us, though nightshade and yewberries be not absent. It were, however, presumption if we attempted with the microscope of criticism to classify these growths, or decide whether they belong to the children's 'Adonis Garden' of cut flowers, or the true 'immortal amaranth.' This I leave to other hands than mine in the far-off summers. I have however tried my best to fill the book with such Underwoods (to take Jonson's phrase) as the early Roman poet Naevius spoke of wherein the copse-wood is sown by natural process, not planted;

Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non insita :

a definition, more than two thousand years old, of the strange spell which lifts verse into poetry which it would be difficult to improve. But here that wearisomely familiar tastes differ' warns that no invitation to its critical exercise more liberal and alluring can be held out, than is offered by a selection like the present. One of the worldly-wise Goethe's best aphorisms was that his opinion on any matter was immensely strengthened if he found it accepted by any one fellow-creature. But I cannot hope even as much acceptance for this book. Varieties in taste, often deeply rooted and strenuously held, will lead every reader to condemn me for omissions and inclusions: inevitably, and rightly. For such judgments reveal the power which poetry, our own recent poetry in especial, holds over us. They testify

to life. All the leniency that can be asked is the reflection that to love the rose need not carry with it scorn of the lily; while the flowers of the Victorian domain are so multitudinous and so nobly large in the blossom, like those sixty-leaved roses which Herodotus, two thousand and more years since, heard of in the king's garden below Mount Bermion, that a limited, an imperfect garland only can be collected within the garth allowed me.

It is my pleasant duty here to give thanks once for all to the copyright proprietors or publishers who have kindly permitted me to transfer their treasures, sometimes almost too graspingly, to the enrichment of this Anthology. Should any claims have been overlooked by inadvertence I ask forgiveness. Special acknowledgments will be found in the notes.

I deeply regret, and every reader will regret with me, that I am not able to adorn my pages with examples of Mr. A. C. Swinburne's brilliant lyrical gift.

After the lapse of six-and-thirty years to complete a book brings with it an inevitable sadness: the longing for the irrevocable; the sigh for the old familiar faces; - of his, perhaps, here above all, who privileged me to dedicate to his honoured name that first volume to which he gave such invaluable aid: it is a feeling such as that to which Goethe, in one of his most beautiful lyrics, gave expression, —

Sie hören nicht die folgenden Gesänge,
Die Seelen, denen ich die ersten sang:

Yet I may hope perhaps for new friends to replace the lost. Kind readers! - if I have the fortune to find such may this little selection, like the former, with whatever deficiencies, be the draught tempting you to approach, in their free fullness, the inexhaustible and invigorating fountains, old and new, of England's Helicon.

February 1897

F. T. P.

xii

The Golden Treasury

Second Series

I

ODE

We are the music makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams :
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.

B

We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

A. O'Shaughnessy

II

CRADLE SONG

What does little birdie say
In her nest at peep of day?
Let me fly, says little birdie,
Mother, let me fly away.
Birdie, rest a little longer,
Till the little wings are stronger.
So she rests a little longer,
Then she flies away.

What does little baby say,
In her bed at peep of day?
Baby says, like little birdie,
Let me rise and fly away.
Baby, sleep a little longer,
Till the little limbs are stronger.
If she sleeps a little longer,

Baby too shall fly away.

A. Lord Tennyson

III

LETTY'S GLOBE

When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year,
And her young, artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,

By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old empires peep'd
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd,
And laugh'd, and prattled in her world-wide bliss ;
But when we turn'd her sweet unlearnéd eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry,
'Oh! yes, I see it, Letty's home is there!'
And, while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.

C. Tennyson-Turner

IV

THE SURPRISE

As there I left the road in May,
And took my way along a ground,
I found a glade with girls at play,
By leafy boughs close-hemm'd around,
And there, with stores of harmless joys,
They plied their tongues, in merry noise;
Though little did they seem to fear

So queer a stranger might be near;

Teeh-hee! Look here! Hah! ha! Look there!

And oh! so playsome, oh! so fair.

And one would dance as one would spring,

Or bob or bow with leering smiles,

And one would swing, or sit and sing,

Or sew a stitch or two at whiles,

And one skipp'd on with downcast face,
All heedless, to my very place,

And there, in fright, with one foot out,
Made one dead step and turn'd about.

Heeh, hee, oh! oh! ooh! oo!-Look there!
And oh! so playsome, oh! so fair.

Away they scamper'd all, full speed,
By boughs that swung along their track,
As rabbits out of wood at feed,
At sight of men all scamper back.