BY OWEN MEREDITH, AUTHOR OF "THE WANDERER," "CLYTEMNESTRA," ETC. "Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungallèd play; For some must watch, while some must sleep: Thus runs the world away."-Hamlet. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 1860. HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY NOV 11 1916 SUBSCRIPTION OF 1916 LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, AND CHARING CROSS. Dedication. TO MY FATHER. I DEDICATE to you a work, which is submitted to the public with a diffidence and hesitation proportioned to the novelty of the effort it represents. For in this poem I have abandoned those forms of verse with which I had most familiarised my thoughts, and have endeavoured to follow a path on which I could discover no footprints before me, either to guide or to warn. There is a moment of profound discouragement which succeeds to prolonged effort; when, the labour which has become a habit having ceased, we miss the sustaining sense of its companionship, and stand, with a feeling of strangeness and embarrassment, before the abrupt and naked result. As regards myself, in the present instance, the force of all such sensations is increased by the circumstances to which I have referred. And in this moment of discouragement, and doubt, my heart instinctively turns to you, from whom it has so often sought, from whom it has never failed to receive, support. I do not inscribe to you this book because it contains anything that is worthy of the beloved and honoured name b |