PUBLISHERS NOTE

The forty-eight poems included in this collection  consisting mainly of sonnets, are among the last written by the Master. He intended to give them all a final revision, but only a few were actually so done. One or two irregularities of rhyming may be noticed, but whether they were purposely meant to be like that or kept only provisionally, it is not possible to say. In several cases, where  it seemed necessary, earlier versions  have been drawn upon for textual collation and the fixing of dates. Where two dates are given for the same poem, the earlier refers to the date of composition  and the other to that of revision.

The poems are arranged in chronological order and their facsimile reproductions given on parallel pages. There are, at places, discrepancies between the facsimile and the printed text. That is because there exist, in view of changes and corrections made from time to time, several versions of most of these poems and for the printed text the choice was deter- mined by the one which was the most complete and seemed to be the last or final, whereas for the facsimile the needs of photography had to be taken into account, the need of selecting the most suitable one for representation.

Except for a few poems which appeared in the quarterly Advent, they are now published for the first time.