Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/17

The invitation to a volume of minor poetry, all written by dwellers in a little island country that has only not been forgotten by the world because it has never come much into the world’s mind, is a task that would demand delicate walking. When its right to exist is called in question, a book after the fashion of Meleager must in the nature of things be itself its own justification; but some account of the circumstances in which its verses have been written may be permitted, for the sake of supplying a due background for their makers, and a right understanding of what may be expected from them.

In these islands, then, first colonized by Europeans less than seventy years ago, and with a total population numbering in 1905 only nine hundred thousand souls—no more than one of the smaller of the world’s cities counts—there has existed right from the very beginning a tradition that it was a good thing to write poetry. The tradition has