The Project Gutenberg EBook of Provocations, by Sibyl Bristowe

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Title: Provocations

Author: Sibyl Bristowe

Release Date: October 12, 2010 [EBook #33855]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROVOCATIONS ***

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PROVOCATIONS

TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER
JOHN SYER BRISTOWE, M.D., F.R.S., LL.D.
THIS LITTLE BOOK OF VERSE
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

PROVOCATIONS

BY

SIBYL BRISTOWE

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

G. K. CHESTERTON

LONDON, W.C. 1

ERSKINE MACDONALD, LTD.

_All Rights Reserved.
Copyright by Erskine MacDonald, Ltd.
in the United States of America.
First published October, 1918_

INTRODUCTION

The verses in this volume cover very many and various occasions; and are
therefore the very contrary of what is commonly called occasional verse.
The term is used with a meaning that is very mutable; or with a meaning
that has been greatly distorted and degraded. Occasion should mean
opportunity; and in the case of poetry it should rather mean
provocation. And the trick of writing upon what are called public
occasions, instead of upon what may truly be described as private
provocations, has been responsible for much verse which is not only
insufficient but insincere. It has produced not only many bad poems; but
what is perhaps worse, many bad poems from many good poets. The
sincerity of Miss Sibyl Bristowe's poetry is perhaps most clearly proved
by the number of points at which it touches life; and the spontaneity,
or even suddenness, with which they are touched. It is an occasional
verse which arises out of real occasions, and not out of merely
fictitious or even merely formal ones. Thus while the one or two poems
on the great war are probably the best, they are by no means the
biggest; they are not the most arresting in the sense of being the most
ambitious. They are arresting because the great war really is great, and
moves an imagina