The Works of Sydney Fowler Wright 1874 - 1965

POEMS Chosen by Boys and Girls - Book I

Arranged by Fowler Wright
and Crompton Rhodes

Basil Blackwell
Broad Street, Oxford
MDCCCCXXV


BOOK I

... Again, the dream is true:

Again, to each, the well-worn path is new.

PREFACE

        The poems in these little books of verse have been chosen, not by a man or a woman, but by ten thousand boys and girls. This needs some explanation. They are the result of an appeal in Poetry for the assistance of those teachers who love poetry, and who have conveyed their love of poetry to their boys and girls. The appeal at once received the cordial sympathy and support of the entire educational press, and the response was a large number of essays containing lists of poems which were received from teachers in every type of school, public and private, urban and rural, primary and secondary. The poems in each list were those which had appealed most to scholars, which had given them the deepest joy, the highest delight. With singular generosity these lovers of poetry placed at the disposal of the editors the wisdom and experience of years, often with hundreds of children, in many schools. Ten thousand is, indeed, too low a figure to cover the number of collaborators, and to those teachers who contributed these most valuable essays the warm thanks of the publishers and the editors are tendered.

        Apart from the arranging of the poems into books and negotiating copyrights, the editors' work has been, and been only, the ensuring that the poems chosen are those which, under the guidance of lovers of poetry, have carried their beauty into the hearts of the boys and girls - the real collaborators of these books.

S. F.W. & R. C. R.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

        THE Editors wish to thank Miss G. Blades, B.A., assistant editor of Poetry, for her assistance in transcription and collation, and in the work of analysis entailed by the essays.

        Acknowledgements for permission to reprint are due to Mrs. Allingham (for William Allingham), to Mrs. Katharine Tynan Hinkson, Harold Monro, Eric Pinker and Son (for Walter de la Mare), John Murray (for Robert Bridges), Chatto and Windus (for Robert Louis Stevenson), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Hilton Young, Wilfred Meynell (for the late Alice Meynell), and to A P. Watt and Son (for William Butler Yeats).

CONTENTS

The FairiesWilliam Allingham
Piping down the ValleysWilliam Blake
FairylandEthel Gate
You Spotted SnakesWilliam Shakespeare
Sheep and LambsKatharine Tynan
The LambWilliam Blake
The TigerWilliam Blake
Milk for the CatHarold Monro
Gay RobinRobert Bridges
MarthaWalter de la Mare
Sister, Awake (English Madrigal)Anonymous
The Song of the BowSir Arthur Conan Doyle
ChristmasHilton Young
Sweet and LowLord Tennyson
The ShepherdessAlice Meynell
Home from the Daisied MeadowsR. L. Stevenson
The Fiddler of DooneyWilliam Butler Yeats
Lucy GrayWilliam Wordsworth
The WindmillRobert Bridges
The WindmillHenry Wadsworth Longfellow
Abou Ben AdhemLeigh Hunt
Meg MerriliesJohn Keats
The Lost DollCharles Kingsley
The Pobble who has no ToesEdward Lear
A Boy's SongJames Hogg
Song of the ShirtThomas Hood
The Inchcape RockRobert Southey
The Sands of DeeCharles Kingsley
Lady ClareLord Tennyson
Barbara FreitchieJohn Greenleaf Whittier
The Three FishersCharles Kingsley
The RiverCharles Kingsley
The BrookLord Tennyson
The Pied Piper of HamelinRobert Browning

End of this file