And if English poetry may be compared to a broad and luxuriating river … it will be inspiring to observe how its course has been temporarily deflected in the last forty years; how it has swung away from one tendency toward another; and how, for all its bends and twists, it has lost neither its strength nor its nobility.
Louis Untermeyer
Modern British Poetry
Edited by Louis Untermeyer
Untermeyer introduces this collection: “It goes back to traditions as old as Chaucer or tendencies as classic as Drayton, Herrick and Blake. And if English poetry may be compared to a broad and luxuriating river, it will be inspiring to observe how its course has been temporarily deflected in the last forty years; how it has swung away from one tendency toward another; and how, for all its bends and twists, it has lost neither its strength nor its nobility.”
