se of this Note.

It is meant to preface a series of small volumes of verse by young
writers, mostly Cambridge men. That, since the War, young men in
extraordinary numbers have taken to expressing themselves in verse is a
plain fact, not to be denied: that they choose, as often as not, to
express themselves in 'numbers' extraordinary to us can as hardly be
contested. But the point is, they have a crowding impulse to say
something; and to say it with the emotional seriousness proper to
Poetry. For my part, I love the discipline of verse: but I love the
impulse better. Time will soften--I hope not too soon, lest it sugar
down and sentimentalise--a certain bitterness of resentment observable
in this booklet and its next followers: but, as nothing in verse is
nobler than true tradition, anything is more hopeful than convention.

So these booklets have been planned to give youth its chance to make
spoons or spoil horns. If anyone object that the print and page
over-dignify the content of any one volume in the proposed series, why,
that must be a particular criticism, which cannot honestly (I think) be
enlarged to blame the publisher's wish, and the care he has taken, that
what pretends, however modestly, to be a work of the Muse, should step
forth to the public in honourable dress.

ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH

CONTENTS

Mice 9

Rest 10

'The Strength, the Mellow Music,
and the Laughter' 11

Ashes 12

'Du bist wie eine Blume' 13

Home 14

'Maitre de Ballet' 15

The Grudge 16

Wedding Day 17

Crucifixion 18

Spring in Winter 19

The Exile 20

Sonnet for Helen 21

Song 22

Musings 23

The Poet 24

'If all the trees were magic trees' 26

'Alone with these my poems...' 28

_'The Exile' is reprinted by courtesy of the Proprietors of Punch_

Mice

I see the broken