In selecting from the elder poets the editor has been substantially aided by the three volumes on Italy in Longfellow's "Poems of Places," published in 1877. Since that year the tide of travel has set so strongly toward "the warm south" that nearly all of our contemporary poets have been inspired in some measure by Italy. Swinburne, Aldrich, Symonds, Symons, Wilde, Moody, Woodberry, Lazarus, Weir Mitchell,-these moderns have been portraying Italy with a constant growth in vividness, in vigor, in delicacy, in fidelity and sensitiveness to the real Italian atmosphere, a growth comparable to the rise of American painting within the last thirty years. But, of all the recent works in this volume, three poems-"At Tiber Mouth," by Sir Rennell Rodd; Carducci's "Monte Cavo," and "Browning at Asolo," by Robert Underwood Johnson-seem to the editor pre-eminent among modern poems of places. The editor desires to express his appreciation of the kindness of Mr. Gamaliel Bradford, Jr.; Miss Edith Thomas, Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson, Messrs. G. P. Putnams; Houghton, Mifflin & Co.; J. B. Lippincott & Co., Charles Scribner's Sons, and others, who have granted him permission to reprint selections from works bearing their copyright. R. H. S. |