This collection of poetry belonged to my Dad when I was little it was my favourite or at leas page 63, I had learned the poem, "there was a Man of Newington by heart and when I asked what a quickest hedge is and was told the humour of the poem was not lost on me. The book naturally falls open to the page I memorized so many years ago.

Worth the read if but for the introduction, a gentle and insightful explanation of English poetry. Drinkwater collects many of the standards of the day, so there may not be many new discoveries for anthology addicts, but in trying to explain the mystery as well as the mechanics of poetry, he writes for not down to the young people he hopes will embrace and then transmit this heritage to generations to come.

An excerpt: And so poetry is beautifully like life itself in seeming not to change yet always being new. Each year you see the trees covering themselves with green, the flowers in bloom, the young animals in the fields, the sun shining on the corn, the frost making its icicles and putting lovely patterns on the window. And in a way these seem to be the same trees and flowers and seasons that have been passing before men's eyes far back through the ages, and yet each year they are all marvellously new, as truly exciting discoveries for us when we see them as though there had never been such life before. And so with the poet and his poetry. He sees the same world, feels the same emotions, and meets the same questions as did his fathers for generations before him, and in finding expression for the working of his mind he will generally accept a form that has grown up in the practice of many poets whom he follows. But he sees and feels and questions out of his individual life, until the old experience is transfigured into something radiantly new and interesting, and he breathes into the old forms of poetry his own delighted sense of rhythm, until they too become fresh and vivid as the flowers that come to us with untiring wonder year by year. ( )