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"mingling," and approaches the meaning of our 'twilight' analytically. Apart from which considerations, my exiles are surrounded, in the scene described, by supernatural appearances; and the shadows that approach them, are not only of the night.

The next longest poem to the "Drama of Exile" in the collection, is the "Vision of Poets," in which I have endeavored to vindicate the necessary relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice. To the eyes of a living generation, the poet is at once a richer and a poorer man than he used to be: he wears better broadcloth, but speaks no more oracles: and the evil of this social incrustation over a great idea, is eating more deeply and fatally into our literature, than either readers or writers apprehend. I have attempted to express in this poem, my view of the mission of the veritable poet, of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the uses of sorrow suffered in it, of the great work accomplished in it through suffering, and of the duty and glory of what Balzac has beautifully and truly called "la patience angèlique du genie." It is enough to say of the other poems, that scarcely one of them does not aspire to an object and a significance. Since the time when my "Seraphim" was received with more kindness than its writer had courage to hope for, I dare not count upon having put away the faults with which that volume abounded and was mildly reproached. Something indeed I may hope to have retrieved; because some progress in mind and in art every active thinker and honest writer must consciously or unconsciously make, with the progress of existence and experience; and, in some sort, "since we learn in suffering what we teach in song;" my songs may be fitter to teach. But if it were not presumptuous language on the lips of one to whom life is more than usually uncertain, my favorite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public as a deposit, ambitious of approaching to the nature of a security for a future offering of more value and acceptability. I would fain do better; and I feel as if I might do better:

VOL. II.-2

I aspire to do better. In any case, my poems, while full of faults, as I go forward to my critics and confess,have my heart and life in them: they are not empty shells. If it must be said of me that I have contributed unworthy verses, I also, to the many rejected by the age, it cannot, at least, be said that I have done so in a light and irresponsible spirit. Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life itself; and life has been a very serious thing: there has been no playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet. I have done my work, so far, as work; not as mere hand and head work apart from the personal being, but as the completest expression of that being to which I could attain,— and, as work, I offer it to the public; feeling its faultiness more deeply than any of my readers, because measured from the height of my aspiration,-but feeling also that the reverence and sincerity with which the work was done, should protect it in the thoughts of the reverent and sincere.

A DRAMA OF EXILE.

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SCENE The outer side of the gate of Eden shut fast with clouds, from the depth of which revolves the sword of fire, self-moved. A watch of innumerable ANGELS, rank above rank, slopes up from around it to the zenith; and the glare, cast from their brightness and from the sword, extends many miles into the wilderness. ADAM and EVE are seen in the distance, flying along the glare. The ANGEL GABRIEL and LUCIFER are beside the gate.

Lucifer. Hail Gabriel, the keeper of the gate!
Now that the fruit is plucked, prince Gabriel,
I hold that Eden is impregnable

Under thy keeping.

Gabriel.

Angel of the sin,

Such as thou standest,—pale in the drear light

Which rounds the rebel's work with Maker's wrath,—

Thou shalt be an Idea to all souls ;-

A monumental melancholy gloom

Seen down all ages; whence to mark despair,

And measure out the distances from good!

Go from us straightway.

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