Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/15

 PUBLISHERS' NOTE

the present volume are collected the poems formerly contained in the Household Edition of "Stedman's Poetical Works" and in "Poems Now First Collected," together with a number of pieces written since the publication of the last-named series. Shortly before his death Mr. Stedman gave directions for the preparation of a new volume, to contain all the poems which he deemed worthy of preservation, rearranged according to subjects, rather than, as is usual in collections of the kind, in the order of their original publication. The editors, in accordance with these instructions, have grouped the various poems, related either by subject or by the occasion which produced them, in eleven sections. Thirteen poems published in previous editions, most of them juvenilia, have been omitted entirely, and three others have been largely pruned. All the pieces published in "Poems Now First Collected" have been preserved, and seventeen, written since that volume was issued, have been included in this definitive edition. Among the latter are "Mater Coronata," the "Hymn of the West," "H. van D.," "To Dr. Waldstein on His Proposal to Excavate Herculaneum," and "John Hay." Translations of the thirteenth and a part of the tenth idyls of Theocritus have been added, not only because of their beauty and the faithfulness of the rendering from the Greek, but as examples of a work which Mr. Stedman had in mind to do and had in part accomplished—a metrical version of the Sicilian Poets, Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. He was prevented by his other occupations from completing the work, and the two fragments here given are the only ones which he left in shape for publication.

October 5, 1908.