PRIMAVERA: POEMS
BY FOUR AUTHORS

PORTLAND MAINE PUBLISHED
BY THOMAS B MOSHER AT XLV
EXCHANGE STREET MDCCCC

[vi]

PREFACE

Primavera: Poems, by Four Authors. Oxford:
Published by B. H. Blackwell, Broad Street.
MDCCCXC. (Fcap 8vo, pp. 43.)

Such is the title of a little 'book of verses' that at the timefound favour in the eyes of a few discerning critics, and then,apparently, was forgotten. As originally issued its dark brownpaper wrapper was adorned with a simple but effective woodcutdesign by Mr. Selwyn Image, which we have reproduced on our firsthalf-title. Even more fortunate has been the discovery of asigned review in the pages of the Academy for August 9, 1890,by the late John Addington Symonds. As a preface nothing could bebetter. And in this connexion the lines which we prefix fromGuarini are also singularly appropriate. For these songs of Youthare still worth while; they thrill and fill us as of yesterdaywith their haunting sense of vanished love, of

[vii]

PREFACE

This little book was written by four friends, three of themunder-graduates at Oxford, and all of them penetrated with thespirit of the higher culture of our time. The poems, it is clear,have been carefully selected; and, it is probable, have beendiligently polished. There is not one which is not remarkable fordelicacy of style and conscious aiming after excellence in art.Whether these qualities promise well for future achievement anddevelopment is a question open to debate. But there can be nodoubt that in Primavera we possess another of those tinyverse-books like Ionica, or Mr. Percy Pinkerton's Galeazzo,which will not lose in freshness and in perfume as the years goby.

The poems have the distinction of making one wish to beacquainted with their authors. [viii]Though they differ a good deal inmental tone, perhaps also somewhat in literary merit, theypossess marked common characteristics: a restrained refinement, asubdued reserve, a gentle melancholy; the note of the latestAnglican æsthetic school. We find no humour, no Sturm undDrang, no inequalities and incoherences of passion. Even whereit is obvious that the emotion has been intense, possibly of arare and peculiar strain, as in Mr. Binyon's "Testamentum Amoris"and Mr. Phillips's "To a Lost Love," the expression of it obeysno violence of impulse. A tender tone of regret, rather than ofacute grief, steeps these stanzas (to quote one instance)addressed to a friend removed into the spiritual world by death.