Page:Where the Dead Men Lie.djvu/11



HEN preparing these verses for the press, the first question which met me was this: Should Boake be treated from a literary standpoint or from a personal standpoint—as poet or as man and poet? I chose the personal standpoint. To consider Boake as a literary figure, with an eye chiefly to his literary reputation, meant omission of whatever herein is crude or weak, in order that readers should judge him only by his best. Such a course implied loss and discontent to many persons who care little for the niceties of style, and find in vigorous picturing and natural emotion ample amends for bad rhymes and false accents. And, what is more important, such a course would have given a wrong impression of Boake. Some of his most valuable work lies in fragments of poems which as wholes seem comparatively ineffective. These fragments could not be divorced from the context, yet were not lightly to be discarded. Further, Boake's least remarkable compositions, with two or three exceptions, are as characteristic of Australia and of himself as are