PREFACE

TO THE

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION.

My love and admiration have belonged to the great American people, as long as I have felt proud of being an Englishwoman, and almost as long as I have loved poetry itself. But it is only of late that I have been admitted to the privilege of personal gratitude to Americans, and only to-day that I am encouraged to offer to their hands an American edition of a new collection of my poems, about to be published in my own country. This edition precedes the English one by a step,—a step eagerly taken, and with a spring in it of pleasure and pride-suspended, however, for a moment, that, by a cordial figure I may kiss the soil of America, and address my thanks to those sons of the soil, who, if strangers and foreigners, are yet kinsmen and friends, and who, if never seen, nor perhaps to be seen by eyes of mine, have already caused them to glisten by words of kindness and courtesy.

The present collection consists of poems which have been composed since the period of the publication of my ‘Seraphim ;' variously colored, or perhaps shadowed, by the life of which they are the natural expression; and, with the few exceptions of what have appeared in American or English periodicals, are offered now for the first

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time to any public. The first poem of the collection, A Drama of Exile,' being the longest and most important work (to me!) which I ever trusted into the current of publication, I may be pardoned for entreating the reader's attention to the fact, that I decided on publishing it after considerable hesitation and doubt. The subject of the drama rather fastened on me than was chosen; and the form, approaching the model of the Greek tragedy, shaped itself under my hand, rather by force of pleasure, than of design. But when the compositional excitement had subsided, I felt afraid of my position. My own object was the new and strange experience of the fallen Humanity, as it went forth from Paradise into the wilderness; with a peculiar reference to Eve's allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her womanhood, and the consciousness of being the organ of the Fall, to her offence,-appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more expressible by a woman than a man. There was room, at least, for lyrical emotion in those first steps into the wilderness,-in that first sense of desolation after wrath,-in that first audible gathering of the reproachful groan of the whole creation,"-in that first darkening of the hills from the withdrawing footsteps of angels,—and in that first silence of the voice of God. And I took pleasure in driving in, like a pile, stroke upon stroke, the idea of EXILE,-admitting Lucifer as an extreme Adam, to represent the ultimate tendencies of sin and loss,-that that idea might be strong to bear up the contrary one of the heavenly good and glory. But when all was done, I felt afraid, as I have said, of my position. I had promised my own intentions, to shut close the gates of Eden between Milton and myself, so that none might say I dared to walk in his footsteps. He should be within, I thought, with his Adam and Eve unfallen or falling, and I, without, with my exiles,—I also an exile! It would not do. The subject and his glory covering it, swept through the gates, and I stood full in it against my will, and contrary to my vow; till I shrank back hesitat

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ing, almost desponding,-fearing to venture even a passing association with our great poet before the face of the public. Whether, at last, I recovered courage for the venture, by a sudden revival of that love of manuscript which should be classed by moral philosophers among the natural affections, or by the encouraging voice of a dear friend, it is not important to the reader to inquire. Neither could the fact affect the question; since I bear, of course, my own responsibilities. For the rest, Milton is too high, and I am too low, to render it necessary for me to disavow any rash emulation of his divine faculty on his own ground; while enough individuality will be conceded, I hope, to my poem, to rescue me from that imputation of plagiarism, which should be too servile a thing for every sincere thinker. After all, and at the worst, I have only attempted, in respect to Milton, what the Greek Dramatists achieved lawfully in respect to Homer. They constructed dramas on Trojan ground: they raised on the buskin and even clasped with the sock, the feet of Homeric heroes; yet they neither imitated their Homer, nor emasculated him. The Agamemnon of Eschylus, who died in the bath, did no harm to nor suffered any harm from the Agamemnon of Homer, who bearded Achilles. To this analogy,—not, be it understood, to this comparison!—I appeal. For the analogy of the stronger may apply to the weaker; and the reader may have patience with the weakest while she suggests the application.

On a graver point I must take leave to touch, in further reference to my dramatic poem. The divine Saviour is represented in vision, towards the close, speaking and transfigured: and it has been hinted to me that this introduction may give offence in quarters where I should be most reluctant to give it. A reproach of the same class, relating to the frequent recurrence of a Great Name in my pages, has already filled me with regret. How shall I answer these things? Frankly, at any rate. Because the old mysteries represented the Holy Being in a rude familiar fashion, and the people gazed on with the faith

of children in their earnest eyes, the critics of a succeeding age, who rejoiced in Congreve, called them profane. Yet Andreini's 'mystery' suggested Milton's epic: and Milton, doubting whether to cast his poem into the epical or the dramatic form, left a rough sketch on the latter basis, in which his temporary intention of introducing the 'Heavenly Love' among the persons of his drama, is extant to the present day. But the tendency of the present day is to sunder the daily life from the spiritual creed; to separate the worshipping from the practical man: and by no means to 'live by faith.' There is a feeling abroad, which appears to me (and I say it with deference) nearer to superstition than to religion,—that there should be no touching of holy vessels, except by consecrated fingers; nor any naming of holy names, except in consecrated places. As if life were not a continual sacrament to man, since Christ brake with His hands, the daily bread of it! As if the name of God did not build a Church, by the very naming of it! As if the word GoD were not, everywhere in His creation, and at every moment in His eternity, an appropriate word! As if it could be uttered unfitly, if devoutly! I appeal on these points; which I will not argue,-from the conventions of the Christian, to his devout heart; and I beseech him generously to believe of me, that I have done that in reverence, from which, through reverence, he might have abstained; and that where he might have been compelled to silence by the principle of adoration, I, from the same principle, have been hurried into speech.

It should have been observed in another place,—the fact however being sufficiently obvious throughout the drama, that the time' is from the evening into the night. If it should be objected, that I have lengthened my twilight too much for the East, I might hasten to answer that we know nothing of the length of mornings and evenings before the flood, and that I cannot, for my own part, believe in an Eden, without the longest of purple twilights. The evening of Genesis, signifies a