Excerpt from The Malory Verse Book: A Collection of Contemporary Poetry for School and General Use The poems included in this volume have been carefully selected for their intrinsic beauty, charm of simplicity, and dignity of thought, and may be accepted as thoroughly representative of the finest, most expressive, contemporary English verse. The poems of nature and country life betray an innate love of familiar hills and woodlands, the lovely secrets to be won from Nature's heart, and the inspiration derived from wide and untrammelled spaces of moorland and sea. It would be impossible adequately to represent recent poetry without introducing themes influenced by the War. These poems reveal the soul of the nation during strenuous years, the spirit of optimism and indomitable courage of those on active service, deep love of home and country and the high ideals for which men fought and died. The compiler need add nothing to the words of Sir Philip Sidney, quoted as a definition of the intention of A Cluster of Grapes: "Hee doth not onely shew the way, as will entice anie man to enter into it: nay he doth as if your journey should lye through a faire vineyard, at the verie first, give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste, you may long to passe further." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.