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CHAPTER I THE COUNTRY GIRL—WHERE IS SHE? The clarion of the country life movement has by this time been blown with such loudness and insistence that no hearing ear in our land can have escaped its announcement. The distant echoes of brutal warfare have not drowned it: above all possible rude and cruel sounds this peaceful piping still makes itself heard. It has reached the ears of the farmer and has stirred his mind and heart to look his... more...

The true story of the life of Michael Drayton might be told to, vindicate the poetic traditions of the olden time. A child-poet wandering in fay-haunted Arden, or listening to the harper that frequented the fireside of Polesworth Hall where the boy was a petted page, later the honoured almoner of the bounty of many patrons, one who "not unworthily," as Tofte said, "beareth the name of the chiefest archangel, singing after this soule-ravishing... more...

CHAPTER I A Boy of the French Nobility AMONG the rugged Auvergne Mountains, in the southern part of France, stands a castle that is severe and almost grim in its aspect. Two bare round towers flank the building on the right and on the left. Rows of lofty French windows are built across the upper part of the front, and the small, ungenerous doorway below has a line of portholes on either side that suggest a thought of warlike days gone by. This... more...

INTRODUCTION The last decade of the sixteenth century was marked by an outburst of sonneteering. To devotees of the sonnet, who find in that poetic form the moat perfect vehicle that has ever been devised for the expression of a single importunate emotion, it will not seem strange that at the threshold of a literary period whose characteristic note is the most intense personality, the instinct of poets should have directed them to the form most... more...