Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/23

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Introduction.
xix

topographical or local poetry would have been compiled by entirely different canons. However much a characteristic subject may have been written of—as, for instance, the wrecks that have strewn our coasts since earlier days than the whalers’, and sown the headlands thick with sad associations—if a piece of verse on it that comes up to standard has not yet appeared, the subject has perforce been ignored. The first rule of the editors has been to choose the best verse available, irrespective of subject. At the same time, where this rule would allow, those verses have been selected that would give the widest and fairest representation of the writer and lend as much as might be some character of homogeneity to the volume as a whole. In a pioneer land, insistence on technical excellence presses with exceptional heaviness, and some verses have been admitted in spite of their formal imperfections, for the sake of a little gold in the sand.

Such considerations have joined with the element of sheer personal taste, which it has been attempted to minimize, but which cannot altogether be eliminated, in determining the character and scope of the present volume. It must be remembered that the selection cannot show the range of the different kinds of verse as written: to give an example again, there are no patriotic songs inserted, though

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