WIND & THE RAIN

In this anthology of poetry arranged according to seasons of the year, "selections" usually found in collections for young people have been avoided in favor of less familiar works". Modern poets have evidently been avoided also, in favor of Tennyson, Blake, Christine Rossetti, Robert Merrick, Keats, Shelley, etc. In this company the two or three nonsense rhymes by Lear and Lewis Carroll seem strangely out of place, and it is hard to justify the exclusion of contemporary verse in a collection of this sort. The seasons are all represented, though unevenly, with 22 entries under "Spring" and 42 especially joyless ones under "Winter" (e.g., Dirge, The City of Dreadful Night, The Carrion Crow, The Hag, The Witch). We suspect this will be more popular with teachers and assembly program planners than with the children for whom it was intended.