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PREFACE.

OF the verses contained in this volume, a considerable number have already appeared in various periodicals. The rest are productions, for the most part, of a later time-it may be, of less leisure. None of them, with a single exception, can claim the privilege of juvenile poems. I neither deprecate nor defy the censure of the critics. No man can know, of himself, whether he is, or is not, a poet. The thoughts, the feelings, the images, which are the material of poetry, are accessible to all who seek for them; but the power to express, combine, and modify to make a truth of thought, to earn a sympathy for feeling, to convey an image to the inward eye, with all its influences and associations, can only approve itself by experiment-and the result of the experiment may not be known for years. Such an experiment I have ventured to try,

and I wait the result with patience. Should it be favourable, the present volume will shortly be followed by another, in which, if no more be accomplished, a higher strain is certainly attempted.

As there is nothing peculiar either in the principles upon which these poems are written, or the circumstances under which they were produced, further preface would be superfluous. Wherever I have been conscious of adopting the thoughts or words of former, especially of living writers, I have scrupulously acknowledged the obligation: but I am well aware that there may be several instances of such adoption which have escaped my observation. It is not always easy to distinguish between recollection and invention. At the same time, be it remembered, that close resemblance of phrase or illustration, or even verbal identity, may arise from casual coincidence, in compositions that owe nothing to each other.

LEEDS, January, 1833.

SONNETS.

I.

TO A FRIEND.

WHEN We were idlers with the loitering rills,
The need of human love we little noted:

Our love was nature; and the peace that floated
On the white mist, and dwelt upon the hills,
To sweet accord subdued our wayward wills:
One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted,
That, wisely doating, ask'd not why it doated,
And ours the unknown joy, which knowing kills.
But now I find, how dear thou wert to me;

That man is more than half of nature's treasure,
Of that fair Beauty which no eye can see,

Of that sweet music which no ear can measure;

And now the streams may sing for others' pleasure, The hills sleep on in their eternity.

II.

TO THE SAME.

In the great city we are met again,

Where many souls there are, that breathe and die, Scarce knowing more of nature's potency,

Than what they learn from heat, or cold, or rain, The sad vicissitude of weary pain :

-

For busy man is lord of ear and eye,

And what hath nature, but the vast, void sky,

And the throng'd river toiling to the main ?
Oh! say not so, for she shall have her part
In every smile, in every tear that falls ;
And she shall hide her in the secret heart,
Where love persuades, and sterner duty calls:
But worse it were than death, or sorrow's smart,
To live without a friend within these walls.

III.

TO THE SAME.

WE parted on the mountains, as two streams
From one clear spring pursue their several ways;
And thy fleet course hath been through many a maze
In foreign lands, where silvery Padus gleams
To that delicious sky, whose glowing beams
Brighten'd the tresses that old Poets praise;
Where Petrarch's patient love, and artful lays,
And Ariosto's song of many themes,
Moved the soft air. But I, a lazy brook,
As close pent up within my native dell,
Have crept along from nook to shady nook,
Where flow'rets blow, and whispering Naiads dwell.
Yet now we meet, that parted were so wide,
O'er rough and smooth to travel side by side.

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