G.B. Smith is best known for his close friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien, who would go on to write the fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings. He was a talented poet and attended Oxford. In 1915, he fought for England in World War I, and died of wounds received in 1916. After his death, this volume of his poetry was published by Tolkien and dedicated to Smith's mother.
By : Geoffrey Bache Smith (1894 - 1916)
00 - Introductory Note
01 - I: Glastonbury
02 - I: Legend
03 - II: Rime
04 - II: To an Elzevir Cicero
05 - II: To a Dürer Drawing of Antwerp Harbour
06 - II: Pure Virginia
07 - II: A Preface for a Tale I have never told
08 - II: A Sonnet
09 - II: ''It was all in the Black Countree''
10 - II: To a Pianist
11 - II: A Fragment
12 - II: Sea Poppies
13 - II: ''O, sing me a Song of the Wild West Wind''
14 - II: Ære Perennius
15 - II: The Old Kings
16 - II: ''O there be Kings whose Treasuries''
17 - II: A Study
18 - II: The Eremite
19 - II: The House of Eld
20 - II: The South-west Wind
21 - II: Schumann: Erstes Verlust
22 - II: ''Dark Boughs against a Golden Sky''
23 - II: ''Wind of the Darkness''
24 - II: Creator Spiritus
25 - II: Wind over the Sea
26 - II: Songs on the Downs
27 - III: ''We who have bowed ourselves to Time''
28 - III: Anglia Valida in Senectute
29 - III: ''Dark is the World our Fathers left us''
30 - III: Awakening
31 - III: Ave atque Vale
32 - III: ''O, one came down from Seven Hills''
33 - III: Sonnet to the British Navy
34 - III: The Last Meeting
35 - III: The New Age and the Old
36 - III: To the Cultured
37 - III: Afterwards
38 - III: Domum redit Poeta
39 - III: Memories
40 - III: Intercessional
41 - III: April 1916
42 - III: ''Over the Hills and Hollows Green''
43 - III: Sonnet
44 - III: ''O Long the Fiends of War shall dance''
45 - III: For R. Q. G.
46 - III: ''Sun and Shadow and Winds of Spring''
47 - III: ''Let us tell Quiet Stories of Kind Eyes''
48 - III: ''Save that Poetic Fire''
49 - III: The Burial of Sophocles
50 - III: ''So we lay down the Pen''
The poems of this book were written at very various times, one (“Wind over the Sea”) I believe even as early as 1910, but the order in which they are here given is not chronological beyond the fact that the third part contains only poems written after the outbreak of the war. Of these some were written in England (at Oxford in particular), some in Wales and very many during a year in France from November 1915 to December 1916, which was broken by one leave in the middle of May.
“The Burial of Sophocles,” which is here placed at the end, was begun before the war and continued at odd times and in various circumstances afterwards; the final version was sent me from the trenches.
Beyond these few facts no prelude and no envoi is needed other than those here printed as their author left them.
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