ABSTRACT
In the Preface to his Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children, first published in 1916, Kenneth Grahame announced the challenges and charms of assem - bling anthologies of verse.
In compiling a selection of Poetry for Children, a conscientious Editor is bound to find himself confronted with limitations so numerous as to be almost disheartening. For he has to remember that his task is not to provide simple examples of the whole range of English poetry, but to set up a wicket-gate giving attractive admission to that wide domain, with its woodland glades, its pasture and arable, its walled and scented gardens here and there, and so to its sunlit, sometimes misty, mountaintops-all to be more fully explored later by those who are tempted on by the first glimpse. And always he must be proclaiming to the small tourists that there is joy, light and fresh air in that delectable country.
