Song Be Delicate
"Song Be Delicate" is a poem by Australian poet John Shaw Neilson. It was first published in The Bookfellow on 15 November 1913 with the title "Let Your Song Be Delicate", and later in the poet's collections and other Australian poetry anthologies.
Outline
"Song Be Delicate" is a love poem, encouraging lovers to be kind to each other in the face of the world's problems.
Analysis
In a piece on the poet's work in The Sydney Morning Herald, "S. R." noted that this individual poem "seems to describe Neilson's poetry" in general.
H. M. Green, in his work A History of Australian Literature called the atmosphere of the poem "a happy one", also describing the work as "etheriel".
Further publications
Poetry in Australia 1923, Vision Press, 1923An Australasian Anthology : Australian and New Zealand Poems edited by Percival Serle, R. H. Croll, and Frank Wilmot, Collins, 1927Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson edited by R. H. Croll, Lothian, 1934Poets of Australia : An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by George Mackaness, Angus & Robertson, 1946An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by George Mackaness, Angus & Robertson, 1952A Book of Australian Verse edited by Judith Wright, Oxford University Press, 1956From the Ballads to Brennan edited by T. Inglis Moore, Angus & Robertson, 1964Bards in the Wilderness : Australian Colonial Poetry to 1920 edited by Adrian Mitchell and Brian Elliott, Nelson, 1970The Penguin Book of Australian Verse edited by Harry Heseltine, Penguin Books, 1972The Golden Apples of the Sun : Twentieth Century Australian Poetry edited by Chris Wallace-Crabb, Melbourne University Press, 1980Green Days and Cherries: The Early Verses of Shaw Neilson edited by Hugh Anderson and Leslie James Blake, Red Rooster Press, 1981The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Verse edited by Beatrice Davis, Nelson, 1984Cross-Country : A Book of Australian Verse edited by John Barnes and Brian MacFarlane, Heinemann, 1984My Country : Australian Poetry and Short Stories, Two Hundred Years edited by Leonie Kramer, Lansdowne, 1985Two Centuries of Australian Poetry edited by Mark O'Connor, Oxford University Press, 1988John Shaw Neilson : Poetry, Autobiography and Correspondence edited by Cliff Hanna, University of Queensland Press, 1991Selected Poems by John Shaw Neilson, Angus and Robertson, 1993The Oxford Book of Australian Love Poems edited by Jennifer Strauss, Oxford University Press, 1993A Return to Poetry 2000 edited by Michael Duffy, Duffy and Snellgrove, 2000Our Country : Classic Australian Poetry : From Colonial Ballads to Paterson & Lawson edited by Michael Cook, Little Hills Press, 2002Hell and After : Four Early English-language Poets of Australia edited by Les Murray, Carcanet 2005An Anthology of Australian Poetry to 1920 edited by John Kinsella, University of Western Australia Library, 2007Southerly, Vol 68, No 3, 2008100 Australian Poems of Love and Loss edited by Jamie Grant, Hardie Grant Books, 2011