[edit] My First Poems

I sent them out on chosen beats
As painted harlots of the streets;
O Christ, forgive me for my sins,
An old jew bought my virgin twins

The British Library catalogue lists two poetry books for 1914^[1][2].

What follows are some views. This does suggest that Middleton had submitted the same book to different publishers. The contents, however, differ; but it is still the case of more of the same. I have no idea why there had been a change of publisher from the ‘Walter Scott Publishing Company’?

Middleton comments, in the poem called ‘My Early Poems” (1950) rather suggest the poems had just ‘poured’ out and he did try and re-write some of them in later years. It is only a memory - there is little family left - but my  cousin remembered her grandmother - Middleton’s wife - saying that her husband had wished for some sort of recognition for his poetry.

In ‘My first poems’, the virgin twins must mean poetry and music; the rest of the verse has to be left to the imagination. But, of course, the first world war was coming and, far worse, from Middleton’s point of view, came T.S Elliot and the ‘Waste Land’
But, in 1914 this was the future.