Later Poems and Flower of the Mind | Page 3

statement. You may however, if you wish, distribute this
etext in machine readable binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary
form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word
processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
*EITHER*:
[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
does *not* contain characters other than those
intended by the author

of the work, although tilde (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters
may be used to convey punctuation intended by the
author, and
additional characters may be used to
indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent form by the
program that displays the etext (as is the case, for instance, with most
word processors); OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the etext in its original
plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
"Small Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to
calculate your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is
due. Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg
Association/Carnegie-Mellon University" within the 60 days following
each
date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your
annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO? The Project gratefully accepts contributions in
money, time, scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts,
royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you
can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association /
Carnegie-Mellon University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

This etext was prepared by David Price, email [email protected]
from the 1893 Grant Richards edition of The Flower of the Mind and
the 1902 John Lane edition of Later Poems.
THE FLOWER OF THE MIND
INTRODUCTION
Partial collections of English poems, decided by a common subject or
bounded by narrow dates and periods of literary history, are made at
very short intervals, and the makers are safe from the reproach of
proposing their own personal taste as a guide for the reading of others.
But a general Anthology gathered from the whole of English
literature--the whole from Chaucer to Wordsworth--by a gatherer intent
upon nothing except the quality of poetry, is a more rare enterprise. It is
hardly to be made without tempting the suspicion--nay, hardly without
seeming to hazard the confession--of some measure of self-confidence.
Nor can even the desire to enter upon that labour be a frequent one--the
desire of the heart of one for whom poetry is veritably "the
complementary life" to set up a pale for inclusion and exclusion, to add
honours, to multiply homage, to cherish, to restore, to protest, to
proclaim, to depose; and to gain the consent of a multitude of readers to
all those acts. Many years, then--some part of a century--may easily
pass between the publication of one general anthology and the making
of another.
The enterprise would be a sorry one if it were really arbitrary, and if an
anthologist should give effect to passionate preferences without
authority. An anthology that shall have any value must be made on the
responsibility of one but on the authority of many. There is no caprice;
the mind of the maker has been formed for decision by the wisdom of
many instructors. It is the very study of criticism, and the grateful and
profitable study, that gives the justification to work done upon the
strongest personal impulse, and done, finally, in the mental solitude
that cannot be escaped at the last. In another order, moral education
would be best crowned if it proved to have quick and profound control
over the first impulses; its finished work would be to set the soul in a
state of law, delivered from the delays of self-distrust; not action only,

but the desires would be in an old security, and a wish would come to
light already justified. This would be the second--if it were not the
only--liberty. Even so an intellectual education might assuredly confer
freedom upon first and solitary thoughts, and confidence and
composure upon the sallies of impetuous courage. In a word, it should
make a studious anthologist quite sure about genius. And all who have
bestowed, or helped in bestowing, the liberating education have given
their student the authority to be free. Personal and singular the choice
in such a book must be, not without right.
Claiming and disclaiming so much, the gatherers may follow one
another to harvest, and glean in the same fields in different seasons, for
the repetition of the work can never be