Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/41

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INTRODUCTION
41

"Poets," said Shelley, "are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," and he meant by legislation the guidance and determination of the verdicts of the human soul. In the collection as a whole, the receptive reader will find many suggestions, finely and sensitively expressed, touching the poetic truth (the "essential truth") of War, and the spiritual reciprocities that relate our personal lives to our national and international struggles.

G. H. C.