page xv

I know an island,
Lovely and lost, and half the world away;
And there, 'twixt lowland and highland,
Lies a pool, rich with murmur and scent and glimmer,
And there my friends go, all the radiant day,
Each golden-limbed and flower-crowned laughing swimmer.

Evil, and gloom, and cold o' nights in my land;
But—I know an island
Where Beauty and Courtesy, as flowers, blow.

Rupert Brooke.

The above quotalion, and the extract from the essay first published in the New Statesman quoted on pp. 84, 85, 86, 87, 266, 267, are reprinted from Letters from America, by Rupert Brooke (XIV. "Some Niggers"), by permission of the Literary Executor and Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd.