The Muses by Ethel Maude Colson (Poem)

 

THE MUSES 

 

by Ethel Maude Colson

Of old the Muses sat on high,
And heard and judged the songs of men;
On one they smiled, who loitered by;
Of toiling ten, they slighted ten.  

They lightly serve who serve us best,
Nor know they how the task was done ;
We Muses love a soul at rest,
But violence and toil we shun.

If men say true, the Muses now
Have changed their ancient habitude,
And would be served with knitted brow,
And stress and toil each day renewed.

So each one with the other vies,
Of those who weave romance or song:
On us, O Muse, bestow thy prize,
For we have striven well and long! 

And yet methinks I hear the hest
Come murmuring down from Helicon:
They lightly serve who serve us best,
Nor know they how the task was done!

— Edith M. Thomas

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 About the Author 

Edith Matilda Thomas (August 12, 1854 – September 13, 1925) was an American poet who "was one of the first poets to capture successfully the excitement of the modern city." Wikipedia

Poetry And The Modern World by Daiches David

 

Poetry And The Modern World

by Daiches David 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. The Legacy op Victorianism: Poetry at the End of the Nineteenth Century Page 1
II. Thomas Hardy A. E. Housman Manley Hopkins Page 17
III.Georgian Poetry Page 3
IV. War Poetry —The Imaoists — Post-war Satire The Sitwells Page 61
V. T. E. Hulme and T. S. Eliot Page 90
VI. T. S. Eliot Page 106 IX —Gerard
VII. W. B. Yeats I Page 128
VIII. W. B. Yeats—II: Page 156
IX. Poetry in the 1930’s—I: Cecil Day Lewis Page 190
X. Poetry in the 1930’s II: W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender Page 214
Epilogue Page 240
Index Page 243

FOREWORD  

 

 I have endeavored in the following pages to present certain aspects of modern English poetry and to discuss them in such a way as to throw some new light on poetic activity in the first forty years of the present century. This work is intended not as a complete history of English poetry during the period but rather as a series of what I hope are suggestive studies. I am well aware that I have omitted to mention many poets of ability: I have written only about those whom I felt able to discuss with some originality, and where I had nothing that I thought new or significant to say I have said nothing. I claim no finality for my views. It seems to me important—and more important than ever these days that a level of intelligent discourse about literature should be maintained. There is no single way to an understanding of the complex phenomena of culture; but, if those who are interested talk to each other reasonably and with intelligence, we shall gradually learn more about these important matters. I should like to think of my work as a modest contribution to a symposium. Acknowledgment is due to Poetry: A Magazine of Verse for permission to reprint parts of an essay on W. H. Auden which first appeared there.
 

D. D.

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Introduction To Poetry by Raymond M. Alden

Introduction To Poetry 

by 

Raymond M. Alden

Excerpt from An Introduction to Poetry: For Students of English Literature Chapter Four, on the fundamental problems of English rhythm, deals with the point of greatest difficulty in the whole range of the subject, and is to be regarded, not as making claim to originality, but as the most individual portion of this book. SO recently as the time of publication of the earlier volume, English Verse, it seemed impracticable to dogmatize on the elements of our metres, with any hope of doing more than adding another note to the discordant jangle of voices on that dangerous subject. But there is evidence that conditions have be! Come more hopeful; recent writers have seemed to tend more and more toward agreement on certain substantial principles and while one must still wait, no doubt, for a generally accredited science of English prosody, it is perhaps safeito offer for the use of students a rather more pretentious body of doctrine than would have been reasonable hereto.
    


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