Dedication
To HIS MOTHER
Geoffrey Bache Smith
Born October 18th, 1894 Entered Corpus Christi College, Oxford, as Exhibitioner October 1913 Received Commission January 1915 Died of wounds at Warlencourt, France December 3rd, 1916
A Spring Harvest
by
Geoffrey Bache Smith
Late Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers
London, W.C.1
Note
The poems of this book were written at very various times, one (“Wind over the Sea”) I believe even as early as 1910, but the order in which they are here given is not chronological beyond the fact that the third part contains only poems written after the outbreak of the war. Of these some were written in England (at Oxford in particular), some in Wales and very many during a year in France from November 1915 to December 1916, which was broken by one leave in the middle of May.
“The Burial of Sophocles,” which is here placed at the end, was begun before the war and continued at odd times and in various circumstances afterwards; the final version was sent me from the trenches.
Beyond these few facts no prelude and no envoi is needed other than those here printed as their author left them.
J. R. R. T.
1918.