The Project Gutenberg EBook of Primavera, by
Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps

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Title: Primavera
Poems by Four Authors

Author: Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps

Release Date: September 4, 2006 [EBook #19170]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIMAVERA ***

Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Sankar Viswanathan,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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PRIMAVERA: POEMS

BY FOUR AUTHORS

PORTLAND MAINE PUBLISHED
BY THOMAS B MOSHER AT XLV
EXCHANGE STREET MDCCCC

* * * * *

PREFACE

_Primavera: Poems, by Four Authors. Oxford:
Published by B. H. Blackwell, Broad Street.
MDCCCXC._ (Fcap 8vo, pp. 43.)

Such is the title of a little 'book of verses' that at the time
found favour in the eyes of a few discerning critics, and then,
apparently, was forgotten. As originally issued its dark brown
paper wrapper was adorned with a simple but effective woodcut
design by Mr. Selwyn Image, which we have reproduced on our first
half-title. Even more fortunate has been the discovery of a
signed review in the pages of the _Academy_ for August 9, 1890,
by the late John Addington Symonds. As a preface nothing could be
better. And in this connexion the lines which we prefix from
Guarini are also singularly appropriate. For these songs of Youth
are still worth while; they thrill and fill us as of yesterday
with their haunting sense of vanished love, of

'Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu.'

* * * * *

PREFACE

This little book was written by four friends, three of them
under-graduates at Oxford, and all of them penetrated with the
spirit of the higher culture of our time. The poems, it is clear,
have been carefully selected; and, it is probable, have been
diligently polished. There is not one which is not remarkable f