THE PREFACE aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa THE WEEK-END BOOK explains itself. A preface can but italicize the anthological principles of the editors. The first of these is the axiom that there are no good anthologies, always excepting the one which every man would like to make himself-with a newly revised, abridged and amplified edition every five years or so. We have accordingly attempted to meet every man half-way and to compile a book of clues to good life and reading for week-end pairs and parties, which each in his fashion may follow up. We hope to have as many collaborators as readers; and to make it easy for them to amplify our design we have included a section of blank pages of writing paper. As for abridgment, we have saved them trouble by printing the titles, first lines and authors only, of those great poems which their pastors and masters in infancy and their poetic enthusiasms in adolescence have already made sufficiently, if not excessively, familiar. These may be transcribed on the blank pages at the end of the book, or recited or banished from memory, according to individual taste and ability. Subject to our first anthological principle, we trust that this pocketful of poetry will, in the main, satisfy the Georgian version of the "Open Road " public. For, after all, there is a consensus of opinion between generations, called taste: not to speak of fashion, that even closer coincidence of appreciation within generations. As it is designed to supplement and balance the Oxford Book of English Verse (carried in the opposite pocket) we have sought out the less familiar of the great poems, poets and periods. The anthology pieces of any author have been avoided wherever there is a worthy alternative. Shakespeare and the Romantics are charily presented, the Augustans not at all. The poetry of the seventeenth century, which school text-books most inadequately present, and that of the twentieth century, which older anthologies perforce ignore, is most amply represented. The section of Great Poems is arranged in chronological order and takes no account of subjects. Love poetry and Nature poetry must take so large a place in any general collection of great poems that lovers and land-lovers need no separate provision. But some pleasant and some poignant verse sprung from the mood of hate has been grouped together for the specific enjoyment of that almost as widely felt emotion. The State poems need no comment. They provide an outlet for yet another mood, not uncommon in hours of sociable relaxation. "The Zoo " should appeal to the collector's temperament. Those who take up the pleasant hobby of zoological literature will find material among the poets for building a handsome collection around this nuclear section. The Songs are ransacked from all ages, countries and moods, the only "unity" observed by the compiler being that of fitness for purpose-the sociable week-ender's purpose. They are some of the best available tunes for unaccompanied chorus singing, only occasionally and effectively to be varied by a solo and chorus rendering. Moreover, they are all folk songs, in the spirit of the word -and the letter too if, as we may fairly contend, the term covers such newer equivalents as shanties," spirituals and the spontaneous effusions of the British Expeditionary Force. Such a collection, we believe, is at present unique. 99.66 The three prose sections contain the most useful hints which we have been able to gather on the food, drink, X |