And it shall be the tryst of sundered stars, And stammering tribes from undiscovered lands, A DREAM My dead love came to me, and said: "Why, as of old," I said; and so But, when I turned to make my peace, Laurence Binyon (Robert) Laurence Binyon was born at Lancaster, August 10, 1869, a cousin of Stephen Phillips; in Primavera (1890) their early poems appeared together. Binyon's subsequent volumes showed little distinction until he published London Visions, which, in an enlarged edition in 1908, revealed a gift of characterization and a turn of speech in surprising contrast to his previous academic Lyrical Poems (1894). A SONG For Mercy, Courage, Kindness, Mirth, Overbrim and overflow, If your own heart you would know; Lives but in its own excess. THE UNSEEN FLOWER I think of a flower that no eye ever has seen, Is it no one's joy? It is beautiful as a queen We have built houses for Beauty, and costly shrines, And a throne in all men's view: But she was far on a hill where the morning shines And her steps were lost in the dew. Anthony C. Deane Anthony C. Deane was born in 1870 and was the Seatonian prizeman in 1905 at Clare College, Cambridge. He has been Vicar of All Saints, Ennismore Gardens, since 1916. His long list of light verse and essays includes many excellent parodies, the most brilliant and delightful being found in his New Rhymes for Old (1901). THE BALLAD OF THE BILLYCOCK It was the good ship Billycock, with thirteen men aboard, A crew, 'twill be admitted, not numerically fitted It was the good ship Billycock put out from Plymouth While lustily the gallant heroes cheered, And all the air was ringing with the merry bo'sun's singing, Till in the gloom of night she disappeared. But when the morning broke on her, behold, a dozen ships, A dozen ships of France around her lay, (Or, if that isn't plenty, I will gladly make it twenty), And hemmed her close in Salamander Bay. Then to the Lord High Admiral there spake a cabin-boy: "Methinks," he said, "the odds are somewhat great, And, in the present crisis, a cabin-boy's advice is That you and France had better arbitrate!" "Pooh!" said the Lord High Admiral, and slapped his manly chest, "Pooh! That would be both cowardly and wrong; Shall I, a gallant fighter, give the needy ballad-writer No suitable material for song? "Nay-is the shorthand-writer here?-I tell you, one and all, I mean to do my duty, as I ought; With eager satisfaction let us clear the decks for action And fight the craven Frenchmen!" So they fought. And (after several stanzas which as yet are incomplete, Describing all the fight in epic style) When the Billycock was going, she'd a dozen prizes towing (Or twenty, as above) in single file! Ah, long in glowing English hearts the story will remain, The memory of that historic day, And, while we rule the ocean, we will picture with emotion The Billycock in Salamander Bay! P.S.-I've lately noticed that the critics-who, I think, In praising my productions are remiss Quite easily are captured, and profess themselves enraptured, By patriotic ditties such as this, For making which you merely take some dauntless Englishmen, Guns, heroism, slaughter, and a fleet Ingredients you mingle in a metre with a jingle, And there you have your masterpiece complete! Why, then, with labour infinite, produce a book of verse William H. Davies According to his own biography, William Henry Davies was born in a public-house called Church House at Newport, in the County of Monmouthshire, April 20, 1870, of Welsh parents. He was, until Bernard Shaw "discovered" him, a cat tleman, a berry-picker, a panhandler-in short, a vagabond. At the age of thirty-four he began to write poetry. In a preface to Davies' second book, The Autobiography of a SuperTramp (1906), Shaw describes how the manuscript came into his hands: "In the year 1905 I received by post a volume of poems by one William H. Davies, whose address was The Farm House, Kensington, S. E. The author, as far as I could guess, had walked into a printer's or stationer's shop; handed in his manuscript; and ordered his book as he might have ordered a pair of boots. It was marked 'price, half a crown.' An accompanying letter asked me very civilly if I required a half-crown book of verses; and if so, would I please send the author the half crown: if not, would I return the book. This was attractively simple and sensible. I opened the book, and was more puzzled than ever; for before I had read three lines I perceived that the author was a real poet. His work was not in the least strenuous or modern; there was indeed no sign of his ever having read anything otherwise than as a child reads." It is more than likely that Davies' first notoriety as a tramp-poet who had ridden the rails in the United States and had had his right foot cut off by a train in Canada, obscured his merits as a genuine singer. Even his early The Soul's Destroyer (1907) revealed that simplicity which is as naïf as it is strange. The books that followed are more clearly melodious, more like the visionary wonder of Blake, more artistically artless and always lyrical. The best of these volumes have been condensed in The Collected Poems of W. H. Davies (1916), the following verses being reprinted by permission of the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. DAYS TOO SHORT When primroses are out in Spring, And small, blue violets come between; |