Palgraves Golden Treasury

One of the few personal items my mother brought with her from Scotland was a copy of Palgraves Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics.  It was first published in 1861 and new editions were issued frequently.  Mum's edition was blue, the paper was fine and the printing was small, certainly not a cheap copy printed for mass distribution.

Inside the front cover was the name Jimmy Milne.  I discovered that Jimmy was my father's cousin, born in the same year as my father and whose mother had died when he was 12 years old.  He was brought up by his Aunt Maggie and Uncle Alex in Johnshaven.  Mum and Dad often visited Johnshaven and the book was probably acquired on one of these visits.  It may have been a wedding present but, as Jimmy's name was written in the front, it was more likely a personal gift from Jimmy to Mum.

Palgrave's Golden Treasury was often brought up to date, at one time, in fact, by Tennyson but their policy was never to publish works by living poets.

To commemorate Mum's love of poetry, here is one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets (number 18).

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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