Page:A Treasury of South African Poetry.djvu/24

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xviii
INTRODUCTION.

literature glorifying a thousand years, "the idle singers of an empty day" here would be the first to do homage. Still, it is hoped and believed that in the fairer and more just comparison with the productions of such sister colonies as New Zealand, Australia, and even Canada, it will he found that relatively South Africa compares not unfavourably, despite the fact—a very vital one, too—that these colonies have (with the one exception) been favoured in possessing from their earliest history more uniformity of language, greater sympathy between the various sections of its peoples, and above all, fortunate in the experience of a calmer flow in their historic annals, which has rendered possible—nay, even fostered that mental and social condition, that finer spirit of harmony and feeling from which the loftiest song is always born.

E. H. CROUCH.

July 1907.