The Works of Sydney Fowler Wright 1874 - 1965

The County Series of Contemporary Poetry No. I

Contemporary Poetry of Warwickshire. No I.
Edited by S. Fowler Wright
(Editor of Poetry and The Play)

The Merton Press, Ltd., Abbey House, Westminster, S.W.I
1925


Contents

D. M. AULD
        Cathedrals
        Thoughts
        A Shell
JESSIE ARDEN BRANSON
        Cherry Street
        If there were dreams
DORA BURTON
        My Friend
SYDNEY H. COULSON
        The Crusader of Arley
        Sonnet
MARGARET S. DANGERFIELD
        In the Nursing Home
        Lines written on board house-boat 'Wolfe'.
        The Exile
M. DAVIS
        The Gardener
M. DEVENPORT
        The Cloisters
LEONARD DINELEY
        A Bridal Thought
        Deep in November
        April and Dorette
        Poppies
S. EABORN
        The Deserted Marsh
ELSIE EMMONS
        To Frederick Walsh
        'Nowt'
ALISON FORSTER
        Tiger Lilies
        The Apple Orchard
        A Suppliant
        Song to Apollo
        Fox Gloves
        The Blackbird
EVA MARY GREW.
        The Strange and Broken Road
        'Mutual Love', the Crown of all our Bliss
        Late Autumn
        City Sparrows
A. G. GUEST.
        The Song of the Milestone
        A Pair of Simple Folk
        September
ARTHUR HARRIS
        From 'The Fortress of Folly'
PHYLLIS HASTINGS.
        Passion and Tenderness
        Forest of Cherries
ALBERT HOUNAM.
        Grass
C. EDITH IRONMONGER.
        Flower-Boats
        China
        Chopin's Ballade in G Minor
        To the Hands of a Great Musician (Cortot)
OLIVE J. IRONMONGER.
        Inspiration
R. EDWARDS JAMES.
        The Hall of Memory
E. WOODWARD JEPHCOTT.
        To a Clouded Yellow Butterfly (Spernall, August, 1922)
        The Sandpiper (from Stream-bird Songs)
        Jack-by-the-Hedge
E. W. MOORE.
        The Storm-Cock
        To Robert Burns
E. E. MORLEY.
        The Daffodil Spikes are Showing in the Garden
        A Sonnet
        That Blackbird's Song
HELEN CLAYTON MORRIS.
        The Hall of Forgotten Things
        I do not Ask
        Amaranth
        The Lumber Room
        China Astor
KATHLEEN LEITCH MAcCUAIG.
        Scotland
        Love
        To a Girl Seen Reading in a Tram
MARION MUCKLEY.
        The Phantom Lover
        The Nun
        My Lady of the Wood
        Old Tom
L N. NORRIS-ROGERS.
        In an Old Garden
JOAN M. GRANT PARTRIDGE.
        The Dragon Shop
        The Green Harper o' the Glen
        Exiled
STANLEY PENN.
        A Stream in Artois
        A Worker's Comrades
        My Garden
ELLA N. RENNIE.
        Isolation
ETHEL M. RICHARDSON RICE.
        Love's Deputy
        Where English Skylarks Soar and Sing
        The Bull-Dog
        The Conqueror
ISABEL CHASE RUDLAND.
        England to Her Dead Children, 1914-1918
        Lines on a Sunset
E. MARSTON RUDLAND.
        St. Joan of Arc
W. N. SCOTT.
        Evening
EVA SPURWAY.
        Vanity (in Stratford-upon-Avon Churchyard)
        L'ile de Cythere (Watteau)
ESTELLE STEEL-HARPER.
        Night
        'Man may be Master of his Mind'
        Woman's Love
        In Memory of an Old Friend
        Realization
K. SUMNER.
        The Choice
LUCY J. TAYLOR.
        Robin
ETHEL M. WARD.
        The Mop (Stratford-on-Avon)
DORIS WESTWOOD
        Morning
        June in London
SYLVIA WHYTE.
        To You
S. FOWLER WRIGHT.
        Désirée
        Knight-Errant

PREFACE.


        This volume is one of a series of County Anthologies of Contemporary Poetry, issued in connection with the work of the Empire Poetry League, but the contributions included are not in any way confined to members of that organisation, though it may naturally be the case that the majority of the authors concerned are among its supporters.
        They are not all equally expert or experienced in craftsmanship. One - and not the least worthy - of the contributors to the first volume of the series, Warwickshire Poetry, is a girl of fourteen. Many others are of established reputation in contemporary literature. All are united in a common artistic purpose, and in the pursuit of ideality in an age which is tragic in some aspects of its materialism.
        So compiled, this series is not intended to be comprehensive, though it is representative, and especially of the younger writers, from among whom must come the makers of English poetry for the next half-century.
        But this claim of 'representative' will almost certainly be challenged by the 'modernist' fraternity, and their supporters.
        The very impartiality with which I have edited these and earlier, anthologies has caused me to be accused of hostility to vers libre, and more broadly to experimental as opposed to traditional forms of poetic expression. But the fact is, as anyone may discover who will make sufficient enquiry, that the bulk of such work is negligible, outside the very narrow circle of the clique which cultivates it in a form which it would be outside the purpose of this introduction to consider in detail
        Where it exists, and wherever its content is anything more than despicable, I have never failed to recognise it, as in the highly experimental work of Mr. Olaf Stapledon in Poets of Merseyside, or the very 'modern' art of Mrs. Dawson Scott, which found its first recognition in the pages of Poetry, and afterwards in the first series of Voices on the Wind, - to the preface of which volume I recommend any who are sufficiently interested, where these aspects of modern poetry is discussed more fully.

        So compiled, what the poetry of to-day actually is, rather than that which any of us would wish it to be, this series can hardly fail to be of some permanent interest and importance.
        It may be said that the poems vary greatly in quality. That is true. I have endeavoured to judge broadly and tolerantly, choosing different poems for different and some times opposite excellencies. Only, and always, requiring that they shall be sincere in expression, and in the worship however humble, of that beauty which all art is born to serve.
        Those of us who are neither deaf to the music of words; nor ignorant of the technique of poetic construction, may yet realise that as 'the life is more than meat, and the body than raiment,' so poetry is degraded from its highest function if it be first regarded as an esoteric art producing curiously-patterned words as subjects for the admiration of the scholar, or the dissecting knife of the critic, rather than a vitalising force, which should be welcomed in any garb, however lowly.

        It has been suggested that each volume of this series should (contain some biographical or other data of the authors concerned, but that would be outside the purpose of the work in which we are interested, which is to extend the love and cultivation of English poetry, rather than the knowledge of those who write it. Besides, the revelation of individuality is contained more certainly in the work of any artist than in the records of his ancestry or occupation. Soldiers and mechanics, peers and butchers, bankers and labourers, men and women of wealth and poverty, of toil and leisure, literate and illiterate, united in the love and practice of poetry, have contributed to make these pages representative of the interests and aspirations of their time and race.
        Poetry is the one art in which the British race is supreme, and by which it will be remembered when its material power may be no more than a legend of history. It is so widely read, and so readily appreciated, because we are a nation of poets. For among poets must be the only audience that poetry can ever win.
        Gathered from such diverse sources, there are yet certain broad deviations observable in the poetry of different counties, which are brought into unusual relief by this method of publication. They are rather variations in subject and outlook, than in any more technical qualities. Where they occur, they throw occasional unexpected lights upon the influences of environment, and the racial characteristics of the localities in which they originate. But it may be largely accidental that some counties appear to be much richer than others in their poetic output. Experience has shown that the response is universal, wherever an intelligent effort be made to organise the lovers of poetry even in areas which have appeared the most hopeless and apathetic at the first enquiry.

        In conclusion, a word of thanks is due to the many lovers of literature, editors, librarians, and members of the E.P.L., in all parts of the country through whose generous enthusiasm and unselfish help the production of these books has been made possible. They are too numerous for individual mention, and it would be invidious to make a selection among the names of those who have shared in a common enterprise.

S. FOWLER WRIGHT
(Editor of Poetry and the Play)
Abbey House, Westminster, Dec., 1925.

S. FOWLER WRIGHT

DÉSIRÉE

      What means the blood-red blooms that rose

        The garth in which you dwell?
      Such gardens of desire enclose
        So cold a citadel.

      What though thine heart's environs make
        Delight to hear and see,
      If none from raptured walls shall take
        That frore virginity?

      What though that closed approach may glass
        An opal's changing fire,
      If none to rule its light may pass
        The gardens of desire?

      The autumn mists thy garth shall grieve,
        The scentless roses fall,
      The lustres of thy siege shall leave
        An unadventured wall.

      Slow fall the night's unchanging snows,
        Where the red roses fell,
      No gardens of desire enclose
        So lost a citadel.

KNIGHT-ERRANT

      He rode where fate or fancy led,

        Though all but stars were alien found;
      Alone he dured in hardihed
        The ventures of enchanted ground.

      By paths that daylight never knew,
        Or brake that held the haunting fey,
      Or where the flaunting pennons flew,
        Or where the covert lances lay.

      Sometime at lonely woodland shrine
        The cross of pain his reverence drew,
      Death-symbol of that first, divine
        Knight-errant that his order knew.

      To lead the strife; to share the toil;
        To hurt ignore; to death contemn;
      When clamorous voices claimed the spoil,
        Careless of heart, to yield it them.

      So rode he, lost to cloud or shine,
        Though frost were keen, or fast were long;
      Still in his eyes the dream divine,
        And in his heart the fount of song.

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