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Lyra Heroica A Book of Verse for Boys By: William Ernest Henley (1849-1903) |
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A BOOK OF VERSE FOR BOYS
SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name. Sir Walter Scott.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS The selections from Walt Whitman are published by permission
of Mr. Whitman; and those from Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier,
and Bret Harte, through the courtesy of Messrs. Houghton,
Mifflin, & Co., the publishers of their works. TO WALTER BLAIKIE ARTIST PRINTER MY PART IN THIS BOOK W. E. H. Edinburgh, July 1891.
PREFACE
This book of verse for boys is, I believe, the first of its
kind in English. Plainly, it were labour lost to go gleaning
where so many experts have gone harvesting; and for what is
rarest and best in English Poetry the world must turn, as
heretofore, to the several 'Golden Treasuries' of Professor
Palgrave and Mr. Coventry Patmore, and to the excellent 'Poets'
Walk' of Mr. Mowbray Morris. My purpose has been to choose and
sheave a certain number of those achievements in verse which,
as expressing the simpler sentiments and the more elemental
emotions, might fitly be addressed to such boys and men, for
that matter as are privileged to use our noble English tongue. To set forth, as only art can, the beauty and the joy of living,
the beauty and the blessedness of death, the glory of battle
and adventure, the nobility of devotion to a cause, an ideal,
a passion even the dignity of resistance, the sacred quality
of patriotism, that is my ambition here. Now, to read poetry
at all is to have an ideal anthology of one's own, and in that
possession to be incapable of content with the anthologies of all
the world besides. That is, the personal equation is ever to be
reckoned withal, and I have had my preferences, as those that
went before me had theirs. I have omitted much, as Aytoun's
'Lays,' whose absence many will resent; I have included much,
as that brilliant piece of doggerel of Frederick Marryat's,
whose presence some will regard with distress. This without
reference to enforcements due to the very nature of my work. I have adopted the birth day order: for that is the simplest.
And I have begun with not Chaucer, nor Spenser, nor the ballads,
but Shakespeare and Agincourt; for it seemed to me that a
book of heroism could have no better starting point than that
heroic pair of names. As for the ballads, I have placed them,
after much considering, in the gap between old and new, between
classic and romantic, in English verse. The witness of Sidney and
Drayton's example notwithstanding, it is not until 1765, when
Percy publishes the 'Reliques,' that the ballad spirit begins
to be the master influence that Wordsworth confessed it was;
while as for the history of the matter, there are who hold that
'Sir Patrick Spens,' for example, is the work of Lady Wardlaw,
which to others, myself among them, is a thing preposterous
and distraught. It remains to add that, addressing myself to boys, I have not
scrupled to edit my authors where editing seemed desirable, and
that I have broken up some of the longer pieces for convenience in
reading. Also, the help I have received while this book of 'Noble
Numbers' was in course of growth help in the way of counsel,
suggestion, remonstrance, permission to use has been such that
it taxes gratitude and makes complete acknowledgment impossible. W. E. H.
CONTENTS
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564 1616) and
MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563 1631).
PAGE
I. AGINCOURT
Introit 1
Interlude 2
Harfleur 3
The Eve 4
The Battle 6
After 10 SIR HENRY WOTTON (1568 1639)... Continue reading book >>
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Kids |
Fiction |
Literature |
Poetry |
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