The anthology opens with Longfellow's 'Travels by the Fireside,' which immediately establishes a central tension: the speaker turns the world round with his hand, reading poets' rhymes, while rain confines him indoors. This poem sets a pattern for the collection—travel as both physical movement and imaginative act. Leonard's selection moves between these poles, from Byron's energetic stanzas to Landor's poignant farewell to Italy. The compiler's epigraph from Cowper—'How much a dunce that has been sent to roam / Excels a dunce that has been kept at home'—hints at a wry, self-aware tone that runs through many of the pieces.

The structure of the anthology itself mirrors a journey: it begins with fireside reverie, progresses through European landscapes, and includes poems that reflect on the act of traveling. The excerpts show a preference for poems that dwell on specific sensory details—mule-bells in Spain, the sea at Elsinore, frogs by Mantuan margins—rather than abstract meditations.

Armchair Travel and the Fireside Frame

The collection's opening poem, Longfellow's 'Travels by the Fireside,' is a deliberate framing device. The speaker, confined by rain, travels through books: 'I turn the world round with my hand / Reading these poets' rhymes.' This poem establishes a key structural element—the anthology itself becomes a kind of armchair journey. Several later poems echo this motif. In Phillimore's 'Viator,' the speaker declares, 'Nowhere I sojourn but I thence depart, / Leaving a little portion of my heart,' suggesting that travel is always partly internal. The anthology thus creates a dialogue between actual travel and imaginative recollection.

Longfellow's second poem in the excerpts, 'Fancies for Memories,' further develops this theme. The speaker recalls a past journey while snowbound, describing how 'the encroaching waves of sleep' overtake him. The poem moves between present cold and remembered warmth, between the 'drifts of snow' and a 'long-lost Paradise.' This oscillation between here and there, now and then, becomes a recurring structural pattern in the anthology.

Movement Between Scenes: From Alpine Torrents to Sicilian Shores

The anthology's poems frequently shift between distinct geographical settings within a single piece, creating a sense of rapid mental travel. Longfellow's 'Travels by the Fireside' moves from 'the Alpine torrent's roar' to 'the sea at Elsinore,' then to 'castles by the Rhine' and 'fields with poppies all on fire.' This technique of juxtaposing disparate locations mirrors the experience of reading a travel anthology—each poem offers a new scene.

Phillimore's 'Viator' employs a similar method, cataloging memories of Italy: 'Suns Neapolitan, white noons at Rome,' then 'the frogs by reedy Mantuan marges,' and finally the 'great white highway southward blazes.' The poem's structure is a series of vivid snapshots, each introduced by 'How' or 'O.' This accumulation of specific, sensory details—'rosy gold upon Verona,' 'the quick Boïte laughs'—gives the anthology a concrete, place-based texture. The movement is not linear but associative, as if the speaker's mind wanders from one beloved spot to another.

Recurring Images: Light, Water, and the Border Between

Certain images recur across the excerpts, creating a cohesive visual language. Light appears in various forms: 'the golden moon' in Landor's 'Farewell to Italy,' 'the first sunbeam on Assisi' in Phillimore's poem, and 'the sun cheered corruption' in Landor's darker reflection. Water is equally persistent—'the ceaseless rain,' 'the Mincio's march,' 'the quick Boïte laughs and departs.' These elements often mark transitions or boundaries between states.

The border between land and sea, or between waking and sleep, is another recurring motif. Longfellow's speaker hears 'the sea at Elsinore' and later sinks 'into caverns cool and deep.' Landor's poem ends with the image of Nature's smiles lighting 'us to our chamber at the grave.' This liminal imagery reinforces the anthology's concern with travel as a threshold experience—between home and abroad, memory and present, life and death.

The Compiler's Hand: Selection and Sequence

R. M. Leonard's role as compiler is evident in the anthology's structure and range. The index lists authors from the 17th to early 20th centuries, including John Cleveland, Andrew Marvell, and Robert Bridges alongside more expected figures like Byron and Longfellow. This chronological breadth suggests a deliberate effort to show how travel poetry has evolved. The sequence of poems in the excerpts moves from fireside reverie to specific European locations, then to farewell and reflection—a miniature journey in itself.

The inclusion of Landor's 'Farewell to Italy' and the excerpt from 'Messina' (with its epigraph 'Homo sum') adds a note of melancholy and classical allusion. The anthology does not shy away from the costs of travel: Landor writes of 'the lone heart' and 'the coffin-lid,' while Phillimore speaks of 'the heart's homesickness for the hills.' Leonard's selection thus balances the pleasures of travel with its inherent losses, giving the collection a nuanced emotional range.

Readers approaching this anthology will find that its structure rewards both sequential reading and dipping in at random. The poems are short enough to be sampled, but the recurring motifs—light, water, the border between here and there—create a cumulative effect. Pay attention to how each poem positions the traveler: as a spectator, a participant, or a dreamer. The anthology's strength lies in its variety of voices, from the wry to the elegiac, all united by a common theme of movement and memory.