ENGLISH POEMS

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
NEW YORK

THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON

THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SENDAI

THE COMMERCIAL PRESS, LIMITED

SHANGHAI

SELECTED AND EDITED, WITH ILLUSTRATIVE AND
EXPLANATORY NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES

By

"

WALTER C. BRONSON, LITT.D.
Professor of English Literature, Brown University, 1895-1928

COPYRIGHT 1908 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
RIGHTS RESERVED. PUBLISHED JUNE 1908
Fifteenth Impression May 1931

ALL

COMPOSED AND PRINTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, U.S.A.

REPLACING

193692

PREFACE

This volume is the third in a projected series of four volumes of English poems, intended especially for use with college classes. The principles governing the selection of poems, the editing of the texts, and the composition of the notes, in the series, were fully set forth in the preface to Vol. IV, and need not be repeated here at length. In brief, the method followed is (1) to choose poems representing the different phases of the work of poets and schools of poetry, (2) to print entire poems or entire parts of poems, whenever possible, (3) to follow the latest accessible text approved by the author, (4) to modernize spelling and punctuation as a rule, but to retain the original form when change would affect rhythm or rhyme, (5) in the notes to explain difficulties of expression and allusion, give the poet's view of poetry in his own words, furnish material (chiefly variant readings and literary sources) illustrating his mode of work, and throw some light, by extracts from contemporary criticism, upon the literary standards of different periods. So much of the most significant poetry of the Restoration and the eighteenth century consists of long reflective, satiric, or descriptive works that it has been necessary to include a good many extracts; but such poems, fortunately, afford many detachable passages that are both complete and representative. The number of minor poets, too, is necessarily large, but it is hoped that they have been duly subordinated to the dii majores.

In the preparation of notes for a volume of selections, an editor's obligations to previous editors are so great that to specify them would be tedious; it may suffice, instead,

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