TO THE READER.
Perhaps it would have been well if the author had followed his original intention, which was to leave out of this volume, as unworthy of republication, several of the poems which made a part of his previous collections. He asks leave to plead the judgment of a literary friend, whose opinion in such matters he highly values, as his apology for having retained them. With the exception of the first and longest poem in the collection, "The Ages," they are all arranged according to the order of time in which they were written, as far as it can be ascertained.
New York, 1846.
