Few of my contemporaries can erase--or would wish to erase--the dye their minds took from the late Mr. Palgrave’s _Golden Treasury_: and he who has returned to it again and again with an affection born of companionship on many journeys must remember not only what the _Golden Treasury_ includes, but the moment when this or that poem appealed to him, and even how it lies on the page. To Mr. Bullen’s _Lyrics from the Elizabethan Song Books_ and his other treasuries I own a more advised debt. Nor am I free of obligation to anthologies even more recent--to Archbishop Trench’s _Household Book of Poetry_, Mr. Locker-Lampson’s _Lyra Elegantiarum_, Mr. Miles’ _Poets and Poetry of the Century_, Mr. Beeching’s _Paradise of English Poetry_, Mr. Henley’s _English Lyrics_, Mrs. Sharp’s _Lyra Celtica_, Mr. Yeats’ _Book of Irish Verse_, and Mr. Churton Collins’ _Treasury of Minor British Poetry_: though my rule has been to consult these after making my own choice. Yet I can claim that the help derived from them--though gratefully owned--bears but a trifling proportion to the labour, special and desultory, which has gone to the making of my book. For the anthologist’s is not quite the _dilettante_ business for which it is too often and ignorantly derided. I say this, and immediately repent; since my wish is that the reader should in his own pleasure quite forget the editor’s labour, which too has been pleasant: that, standing aside, I may believe this book has made the Muses’ access easier when, in the right hour, they come to him to uplift or to console-- ἄκλητος μὲν ἔγωγε μὲνοιμί κεν ἐς δὲ καλεύντων θαρσήσας Μοίσαισι σὺν ἁμετέραισιν ἱκοίμαν