Marlborough, and Other Poems. E-book. Formato PDF Charles Hamilton Sorley   -  Forgotten Books, 2017  - 

But the relevancy is not always very close; the moods of the moment are sometimes expressed rather than matured judgments; and it has to be remembered that what was written was not intended for other eyes than those of the person to whom it was addressed. With the poems it is different; and, had he lived, he would probably himself have published a selection of them with such revision as he deemed advisable. But when a suggestion about printing was made to him, soon after he had entered upon his life in the trenches of Flanders, he put the proposal aside as premature, adding Besides, this is no time for oliveyards and vineyards, more especially of the small-holdings type. For three years or the duration of the war, let be. His warfare is now accomplished, and his relatives have felt themselves free to publish. The original order of the poems is retained in this edition. The first place is assigned to the title-poem some early poems are printed at the end; the other contents are arranged in the order of their composition, as nearly as that order could be ascertained. When the date given includes the day of the month, it has been taken from the author's manuscript; some of the other dates are approximate. Of the undated poems, XIII to XVI were received from him in October 1914, XVII to XXIV in April 1915, XXVII was found in his kit sent back from France, and XXVIII (which appeared for the first time in the second edition) was sent to a friendtowards the end of July 1915. A single piece of imagina tive prose has been included amongst the poems.

The Letters of Charles Sorley: With a Chapter of Biography. E-book. Formato PDF Charles Hamilton Sorley   -  Forgotten Books, 2017  - 

N the spring of 1 9 I 6, a few weeks after the publication of Marlborough and Other Poems, a letter about the book and its author reached me from an unknown correspondent. I have had it a week, he wrote, and it has haunted my thoughts. I have been affected with a sense of personal loss, as if he had been not a stranger but my dearest friend. But indeed his personality the 'vivida vis animi' — shines so strongly out of every line, that I feel I have known him as one knows very few living people: and surely no one was ever better worth I venture to beg you, the writer went onto say, before it is too late, to give the world some fuller account of his brief us know him with his faults nothing extenuated, as his fellows knew him, with the 'rebel' side brought out — the boy who 'got not many good reports,' who was yet the same as he who stood 'with parted lips and outstretched Many other readers made the same request or urged the publication of a volume of Letters from Germany and from the Army, which had been printed privately and given to a few personal friends. At the time we were not persuaded. It seemed to us that enough had been done by publishing the poems and that, for the rest, so dear a memory need not be shared with the world. Meanwhile, however, the poems have become more widely known; curiosity is expressed about their author; and critics form impressions of his personality. If the poems are to have a place, however small, in literature, this interest is only natural and may even be welcomed; but it ought to be well-informed, and the poems alone do not give all that is needed for a true judgment. This is one reason why the present volume is published now. Anything in the way of a formal biography was not to be thought of. But in his familiar letters to his family and friends there is material enough, when taken along with the poems, for forming a picture of the writer. There is also in them a picture of the times, especially in Germany immediately before the war, and a criticism of life and literature, which may be found to have a value of their own.