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PUBLIC LIBRARY

246324

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS. 1902

Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1841, by WILLIAM PLUMER, JR.,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of New-Hampshire.

EXETER:

FRANCIS GRANT'S OFFICE.
C. Norris, Pr.

Amon

PREFACE.

THE poems arranged, in this volume, under the title of YOUTH, or Scenes froM THE PAST, are so far connected with each other, that they all relate, more or less directly, to thoughts, feelings, or events, personal to the author. His aim has been to make each sonnet, or short poem, complete in itself; yet so to construct the whole that, when combined, they should fall naturally into one connected series. This series, if finished according to the original design, would form three separate Parts; corresponding to the natu ral division of human life into Youth, Manhood, and Age. The first Part only, — which traces the developement of the mental and bodily powers, in the studies and amusements of Youth, is here presented to

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the reader. It is complete in itself, and has no neces

sary connexion with the two remaining Parts.

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In giving this attempt to delineate life and character so much of a personal application, the author has been influenced, in part, at least, by a distrust of his ability to treat the subject in a more comprehensive manner. It seemed to him that he could best describe what he most deeply felt. His subject being Life, the life of man, he has endeavoured, instead of treating it in the abstract, to exhibit what appeared to him most likely to interest the general reader, in a single life; and that life, the one with which he was himself best acquainted. This explanation will, it is hoped, free him from the charge of egotism, to which he might otherwise be exposed, by showing that the work took the form of personal narrative, so far as that form is adopted, under the influence of feelings the reverse of vanity or presumption. If it abounds in individual traits and local allusions, it is because the author felt himself most at ease in his native haunts, and among the friends and companions of his early years. If he failed to make these interesting, he could hardly hope for more success in a wider field.

In poems, intended to represent the changing hues of sentiment and opinion, in the successive stages of life, the reader will not be surprised to find some real, and many apparent discrepancies of thought and feel

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