Red is the strangest pain to bear;
In Spring the leaves on the budding trees;
In Summer the roses are worse than these,
        More terrible than they are sweet:
        A rose can stab you across the street
               Deeper than any knife:
    And the crimson haunts you everywhere -
Thin shafts of sunlight, like the ghosts of reddened swords have struck our stair
As if, coming down, you had spilt your life.
                
                                   from 'The Quiet House'

'The great unshackling of women's voices in poetry has one of its beginnings right here. These sad beautiful poems are full of rendings and breakings and burnings.'

So writes Eavan Boland in her introduction to her selection of poems of Charlotte Mew (1868-1928). Identifying in Mew the startling, powerful voice that first made possible a new kind of poetry, free of Victorian expectations of a 'poetess', Boland has selected the poems that have meant most to her as a reader and a writer. The dialogue between the two poets establishes Mew's place in the continuing dialogue of women's writing.