Sister Songs




PREFACE



This poem, though new in the sense of being now for the first time
printed, was written some four years ago, about the same date as
the Hound of Heaven in my former volume.

One image in the Proem was an unconscious plagiarism from the
beautiful image in Mr. Patmore's St. Valentine's Day:-


"O baby Spring,
That flutter'st sudden 'neath the breast of Earth,
A month before the birth!"


Finding I could not disengage it without injury to the passage in
which it is embedded, I have preferred to leave it, with this
acknowledgment to a Poet rich enough to lend to the poor.

FRANCIS THOMPSON,
1895