HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY DR. WALTER ELA SEPT. 11, 1924 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., CAMBRIDGE. NOTE BY THE AUTHOR TO THE EDITION OF 1857. IN these volumes, for the first time, a complete collection of my poetical writings has been made. While it is satisfactory to know that these scattered children of my brain have found a home, I cannot but regret that I have been unable, by reason of illness, to give that attention to their revision and arrangement, which respect for the opinions of others and my own afterthought and experience demand. That there are pieces in this collection which I would "willingly let die," I am free to confess. But it is now too late to disown them, and I must submit to the inevitable penalty of poetical as well as other sins. There are others, intimately connected with the author's life and times, which owe their tenacity of vitality to the circumstances under which they were written, and the events by which they were suggested. The long poem of Mogg Megone was in a great measure composed in early life; and it is scarcely necessary to say that its subject is not such as the writer would have chosen at any subsequent period. J. G. W. AMESBURY, 18th 3d mo., 1857. |