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 in The 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 in Guasti). 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’s Poesie Italiane inedite. No. 3 is but the initial fragment of a poem which took another shape. 1890. NOTE TO FOURTH EDITIONBook 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. NOTE TO PRESENT VOLUMEIn 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 than R. B., Sept. 1899. INDEX |