Insistent practical reasons, however, among which were requests from
some illustrious men of letters who are in sympathy with my
productions, the accident that several of the poems have already seen
the light, and that dozens of them have been lying about for years,
compelled the course adopted, in spite of the natural disinclination
of a writer whose works have been so frequently regarded askance by a
pragmatic section here and there, to draw attention to them once
more.

I do not know that it is necessary to say much on the contents of the
book, even in deference to suggestions that will be mentioned
presently. I believe that those readers who care for my poems at
all--readers to whom no passport is required--will care for this new
instalment of them, perhaps the last, as much as for any that have
preceded them. Moreover, in the eyes of a less friendly class the
pieces, though a very mixed collection indeed, contain, so far as I
am able to see, little or nothing in technic or teaching that can be
considered a Star-Chamber matter, or so much as agitating to a
ladies' school; even though, to use Wordsworth's observation in his
Preface to Lyrical Ballads, such readers may suppose "that by the act
of writing in verse an author makes a formal engagement that he will
gratify certain known habits of association: that he not only thus
apprises the reader that certain classes of ideas and expressions
will be found in his book, but that others will be carefully
excluded."

It is true, nevertheless, that some grave, positive, stark,
delineations are interspersed among those of the passive, lighter,
and traditional sort presumably nearer to stereotyped tastes. For--
while I am quite aware that a thinker is not expected, and, indeed,