My thanks are here tendered to those who have helped me with permission to include recent poems: to Mr. A. C. Benson, Mr. Laurence Binyon, Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. John Davidson, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Aubrey de Vere, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Bret Harte, Mr. W. E. Henley, Mrs. Katharine Tynan Hinkson, Mr. W. D. Howells, Dr. Douglas Hyde, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. Richard Le Gallienne, Mr. George Meredith, Mrs. Meynell, Mr. T. Sturge Moore, Mr. Henry Newbolt, Mr. Gilbert Parker, Mr. T. W. Rolleston, Mr. George Russell (‘A. E.’), Mrs. Clement Shorter (Dora Sigerson), Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Francis Thompson, Dr. Todhunter, Mr. William Watson, Mr. Watts-Dunton, Mrs. Woods, and Mr. W. B. Yeats; to the Earl of Crewe for a poem by the late Lord Houghton; to Lady Ferguson, Mrs. Allingham, Mrs. A. H. Clough, Mrs. Locker-Lampson, Mrs. Coventry Patmore; to the Lady Betty Balfour and the Lady Victoria Buxton for poems by the late Earl of Lytton and the Hon. Roden Noel; to the executors of Messrs. Frederic Tennyson (Captain Tennyson and Mr. W. C. A. Ker), Charles Tennyson Turner (Sir Franklin Lushington), Edward FitzGerald (Mr. Aldis Wright), William Bell Scott (Mrs. Sydney Morse and Miss Boyd of Penkill Castle, who has added to her kindness by allowing me to include an unpublished ‘Sonet’ by her sixteenth-century ancestor, Mark Alexander Boyd), William Philpot (Mr. Hamlet S. Philpot), William Morris (Mr. S. C. Cockerell), William Barnes, and R. L. Stevenson; to the Rev. H. C. Beeching for two poems from his own works, and leave to use his redaction of _Quia Amore Langueo_; to Messrs. Macmillan for confirming permission for the extracts from FitzGerald, Christina Rossetti, and T. E. Brown, and particularly for allowing me to insert the latest emendations in Lord Tennyson’s non-copyright poems; to the proprietors of Mr. and Mrs. Browning’s copyrights and to Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. for a similar favour, also for a copyright poem by Mrs. Browning; to Mr. George Allen for extracts from Ruskin and the author of _Ionica_; to Messrs. G. Bell & Sons for poems by Thomas Ashe; to Messrs. Chatto & Windus for poems by Arthur O’Shaughnessy and Dr. George MacDonald, and for confirming Mr. Bret Harte’s permission; to Mr. Elkin Mathews for a poem by Mr. Bliss Carman; to Mr. John Lane for two poems by William Brighty Rands; to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge for two extracts from Christina Rossetti’s _Verses_; and to Mr. Bertram Dobell, who allows me not only to select from James Thomson but to use a poem of Traherne’s, a seventeenth-century singer rediscovered by him. To mention all who in other ways have furthered me is not possible in this short Preface; which, however, must not conclude without a word of special thanks to Dr. W. Robertson Nicoll for many suggestions and some pains kindly bestowed, and to Professor F. York Powell, whose help and wise counsel