New Poems [by John Shaw Neilson, 1927]

[Editor: This book of poetry by John Shaw Neilson (given here as “Shaw Neilson”) was published in 1927.]

The front cover of New Poems (1927), by John Shaw Neilson — The front cover of *New Poems* (1927), by John Shaw Neilson

New Poems

by Shaw Neilson

Contents.

April Weather
Colour Yourself for a Man
Green Lover
Half a Life Back
He Sold Himself to the Daisies
Lament for Early Buttercups
Love in Absence
Out to the Green Fields
So Sweet a Mouth Had She
Stony Town
The Birds Go By
The Blue Wren in the Hop-Bush
The Child Being There
The Flight of the Weary
The Gentle Water Bird
The Hen in the Bushes
The Irish Welcome
The Lad Who Started Out
The Moon was Seven Days Down
The Sweetening of the Year
Those Shaded Eyes
To an Early-Flowering Almond

The Bookfellow in Australia

Most of these poems have been published in “The Bookfellow,” “The Spinner,” “The Worker,” “The Australasian,” “The Sydney Morning Herald,” or “Aussie”; several are printed for the first time. The author desires particularly to thank the friends who have subscribed this edition in advance of publication.

To Louise Dyer

Wholly set up and printed in Australia by “The Worker,” St. Andrew’s Place, Sydney, 1927.

Source:
John Shaw Neilson, New Poems, [Sydney]: The Bookfellow in Australia, 1927 [A black and white scan of the booklet is available online]

Editor’s notes:
All of the poems in this book were also published in Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (1934).

The entry for this publication in the catalogue of the National Library of Australia says that there was a second printing of this booklet which included the poem “Song Without Wine”. The Bookfellow publisher, A. G. Stephens, rejected the poem for the first printing, but Neilson objected to its exclusion, and the poem was included in the second printing.

The list of contents was arranged in alphabetical order, rather than in order of appearance in the book. The poems appeared in the following order (page numbers are given in brackets):

The Birds Go By (p. 9)
The Sweetening of the Year (p. 10)
Out to the Green Fields (p. 11)
Green Lover (pp. 12-13)
Stony Town (p. 14)
To an Early-Flowering Almond (p. 15)
Those Shaded Eyes (p. 16)
The Blue Wren in the Hop-Bush (p. 17)
April Weather (p. 18)
The Irish Welcome (p. 19)
Colour Yourself for a Man (p. 20)
The Hen in the Bushes (p. 21)
The Moon was Seven Days Down (pp. 22-23)
The Flight of the Weary (pp. 24-25)
Love in Absence (p. 26)
The Child Being There (p. 27)
He Sold Himself to the Daisies (pp. 28-29)
So Sweet a Mouth Had She (p. 30)
Lament for Early Buttercups (p. 31)
Half a Life Back (p. 32)
The Lad Who Started Out (p. 33)
The Gentle Water Bird (pp. 35)