mountains. I have seen populous cities, and have watched the passions
which rise and spread, and sink and change, amongst assembled
multitudes of men. I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages
of tyranny and war, cities and villages reduced to scattered groups of
black and roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished
upon their desolated thresholds. I have conversed with living men of
genius. The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and
our own country, has been to me, like external nature, a passion and
an enjoyment. Such are the sources from which the materials for the
imagery of my Poem have been drawn. I have considered Poetry in its
most comprehensive sense; and have read the Poets and the Historians
and the Metaphysicians (In this sense there may be such a thing as
perfectibility in works of fiction, notwithstanding the concession
often made by the advocates of human improvement, that perfectibility
is a term applicable only to science.) whose writings have been
accessible to me, and have looked upon the beautiful and majestic
scenery of the earth, as common sources of those elements which it is
the province of the Poet to embody and combine. Yet the experience and
the feelings to which I refer do not in themselves constitute men
Poets, but only prepares them to be the auditors of those who are. How
far I shall be found to possess that more essential attribute of
Poetry, the power of awakening in others sensations like those which
animate my own bosom, is that which, to speak sincerely, I know not;
and which, with an acquiescent and contented spirit, I expect to be
taught by the effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now
address.

I have avoided, as I have said before, the imitation of any
contemporary style. But there must be a resemblance, which does not
depend upon their own will, between all the writers of any particular