The poems contained in Book I are my final selection from a volume published in 1873. Those of Book II are from a pamphlet published in 1879. Some of all these are in places corrected. Book III is made up of poems from a pamphlet published in 1880; to which are added others of about the same date. Some of these have already appeared in a volume printed for me by my friend the Rev. C. H. Daniel, in 1884. No. 6 was written to a tune by Dr. Howard. No. 19 is a pretty close translation of a poem by Théophile Gautier, which is itself a translation from the English by Thomas Moore inThe Epicurean. All the poems in Book IV are now printed for the first time. No. 9 is a translation from a madrigal by Michael Angelo (No. VIII inGuasti). It is from my Comedy ’The Humours of the Court,’ in which also No. 16 occurs. No. 11 is from a Sicilian nona rima stanza, the first poem in Trucchi’sPoesie Italiane inedite. No. 3 is but the initial fragment of a poem which took another shape.
1890.
Book V was printed by Mr. Daniel in 1893 and published contemporaneously with an American edition, according to the requirements of the international copyright law. In passing the proofs of this edition I have altered the first line of No. 10: which being actually descriptive of a robin’s song, now appears as such. It was first printed ’Pink-throated linnet.’ I have also written ’and’ for ’or’ in two lines of V. 17, and amended I. 5.
1894.
In revising my ’shorter poems’ for this edition I have corrected a few misprints which seem to have run through the earlier editions; and, though I have refrained from the vanity of trying to improve old work which has been so often printed, I have amended one or two lines which seemed peculiarly bad. I hope that the ’new poems’ which I have gathered to fill this second volume up to the size of the first, may be found in some respects better thanthe old. Eclogues 2 and 3 have already appeared in theCornhill Magazine, and the poems numbered severally 6, 14, 15 and 21, in Mr. Elkin Mathews’Shilling Garland, No. II. 1896. The rest are printed here for the first time: they are of various dates, some of them were written this year for this volume.
R. B., Sept. 1899.