In these rushful days an apology is advisable, if not absolutely essential, from any man, save the one or two elect, who has the temerity to publish a volume of verse.

These stray lines, such as they are, have come to me from time to time, I hardly know how or whence; certainly not of deliberate intention or of malice aforethought. More often than not they have come to the interruption of other, as it seemed to me, more important—and undoubtedly more profitable—work.

They are for the most part, simply attempts at concrete and rememberable expression of ideas—ages old most of them—which "asked for more."

Most writers, I imagine, find themselves at times in that same predicament—worried by some thought which dances within them and stubbornly refuses to be satisfied with the sober dress of prose. For their own satisfaction and relief, in such a case, if they be not fools they endeavour to garb it more to its liking, and so find peace. Or, to vary the metaphor, they pluck the Bee out of their Bonnet and pop it into such amber as they happen to have about them or are able to evolve, and so put an end to its buzzing.

In their previous states these little Bonnet-Bees of mine have apparently given pleasure to quite a number of intelligent and thoughtful folk; and now—chiefly, I am bound to say, for my own satisfaction in seeing them all together—I have gathered them into one bunch.

If they please you—good! If not, there is no harm done, and one man is content.

JOHN OXENHAM