The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lyra Heroica, by Various

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Title: Lyra Heroica
A Book of Verse for Boys

Author: Various

Release Date: September 19, 2006 [EBook #19316]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LYRA HEROICA ***

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LYRA HEROICA

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 idea