MICE
& OTHER POEMS
MICE
& OTHER POEMS
by Gerald Bullett
With a General Note by
Sir Arthur Quiller Couch
ONE FLORIN1921
MICE AND OTHER POEMS
PRINTED IN CAMBRIDGEAT THE UNIVERSITY PRESSAND SOLD IN LONDON BYSIMPKIN, MARSHALL,HAMILTON, KENT & Co
FIRST IMPRESSION JANUARY 1921
MICE
& OTHER POEMS
Perkin Warbeck
9 Market Hill
Cambridge
Uniform with this volume
HOME-MADE VERSES
By D. B. HASELER AND
R. H. D'ELBOUX
LAUGHING GAS AND
OTHER POEMS
By MARGUERITE FEW
GERALD BULLETT
IS THE AUTHOR OF
THE PROGRESS OF KAY
PUBLISHED BY
CONSTABLE & CO. LONDON
NOTE
IF the mental attitude of any critic has ever, in his approach to afirst book of verse, been conciliated by an appreciative notice fromsome older pen, I should say (speaking out of no little experience) thateither the author was dead and the fact advertised in the preface, or,alternatively, that the critic was possessed by a gentler spirit thanmine. I am sure at any rate that artistic work, great or small, shouldbe sternly judged on what it is rather than on what it promises. Thelate J. Comyns Carr, in the days when he wrote dramatic criticism, letloose this restive truth in a couple of short sentences—'We are toldthat So-and-so is a promising young actor. Personally I don't care howmuch he promises so long as he never again performs.'
Let me, then, pass over Mr Gerald Bullett's verses with the simpleremark that I believe in them (he himself calls them 'MICE'—nooverweening title, however boldly printed. Yet mice were dear to ApolloSmintheus, and his proper emblem): and let me come to the generalpurpose of this Note.
It is meant to preface a series of small volumes of verse by youngwriters, mostly Cambridge men. That, since the War, young men inextraordinary numbers have taken to expressing themselves in verse is aplain fact, not to be denied: that they choose, as often as not, toexpress themselves in 'numbers' extraordinary to us can as hardly becontested. But the point is, they have a crowding impulse to saysomething; and to say it with the emotional seriousness proper toPoetry. For my part, I love the discipline of verse: but I love theimpulse better. Time will soften—I hope not too soon, lest it sugardown and sentimentalise—a certain bitterness of resentment observablein this booklet and its next followers: but, as nothing in verse isnobler than true tradition, anything is more hopeful than convention.
So these booklets have been planned to give youth its chance to makespoons or spoil horns. If anyone object that the print and pageover-dignify the content of any one volu