ANOTHER AUSTRALASIAN ANTHOLOGY.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16341, 12 October 1918, Page 7

ANOTHER AUSTRALASIAN ANTHOLOGY.

' The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse is the most daintily got-up selection from the works of Antipodean poets which, has yet appeared. The editor is Mr Walter Murdoch, whose literary taste and general qualifications for the task are beyond question. He anticipates the criticism which is most likely to he offered. "As for Australian readers who already know and value their own literature," he says, 'T cannot hope that the book will please many of them. They will blame the editor both for his exclusions and for his inclusions. They are certain to miss many old favourites. Apart from the established fact that tastes differ, I have but one excuse to offer for niy misdeeds: my omission of certain _ names—and! those among the most widely popular in their own land —is due neither to negligence nor to a lack of appreciation on the editor's part, but simply and solely to the inexorable necessities of copyright." The copyright difficulty one that seems to prevent every! modern anthology from being! what ic ought to be, namely a selection of the best work, of each poet included in the collection. There is no fault to be found, for example, with Mr Murdoch's selections from Adam Lindsay Gordon's .works, or those of Henry C. Kendall. Its judgment in .each case is sure and his choice felicitous. But we cannot agree that Mr W. P. Reeves is worthily represented by only one example, even although that is„ << New Zealand." And one wonders whether the three poems by Sir Heniy Parkes would have been selected at all solely on their merits, apart from the personality of the writer. Thomas a Bracken is represented by one selection only, and Mr Murdoch has had the courage co pass over "Not Understood" an<T given us ,"Pax Vobiscum," a- daintily-executed little composition charged with poetic feeling. Turning to 'local living poets, we find Miss M. Colborne-Veel represented by four " excellent examples— ; "Song of the Trees," "Empty Houses," I "We Go No More to the Forest," and I "The Blessing." Dorothy Frances McCrae (Mrs Perry) has three selections— "The Treasure," "September," and "Homesick," and Miss B. E. Baughan no fewer than six—"The Old Place," "The Mary Ross," "Five Prayers," "God's Acre," "The Greatest Gift," and "On the Just and the TJnjnst." It must be admitted, we think, that justice has been done to Canterbury authors.- (London: Oxford tTrijversitv Press, Humphrey, Milford.) , *