This book represents the 1915 American edition of Brooke's collected poems and is introduced by George Edward Woodberry, an American critic of poetry. A table of contents of titles follows the introduction. Ninety-four poems - all rhymed and almost all of them formal - are thematically arranged on 163 pages.
Thirty six are sonnets. Most of the poems are brief, under two pages in length, and deal with love or ardor (59), death or aging (43), or various combinations of love/ardor and death/aging (33). Only three treat subjects one could call primarily medical or related to medicine: "Thoughts on the Shape of the Human Body" (p. 59), "Paralysis" (p.73) and "Channel Passage" ( p. 90). However, the threads of death, aging, the limitations of one's physicality and loneliness - no strangers to medical humanities courses - are ubiquitous.
His famous sonnet sequence of five poems composed while a soldier in WWI occurs halfway through the book under the grouping "1914." Following the poems is a biographical note by poet Margaret Lavington. There is a photogravure frontispiece dated 1914 with a reproduction of the poet's autograph beneath. The book has no index.
