All through my busy years of prose writing I have occasionally
jotted down idle thoughts in rhyme. Imagining ideal scenes,
ideal characters, and then, as is the way, I suppose, with more
ambitious poets, trying to put myself inside the personalities
I have invoked, trying to feel as they would be likely to, speak
the words I fancied they would say.
The many faults of my verses I can see only too well; their merits,
if they have any, I leave with the public--which has always been
so kind to me--to discover.
And half-hopefully, half-fearfully, I send out the little craft
on the wide sea strewn with so many wrecks. But thinking it must
be safer from adverse winds because it carries so low a sail, and
will cruise along so close to the shore and not try to sail out
in the deep waters.
And so I bid the dear little wanderer (dear to me), God-speed, and
bon voyage.
Marietta Holley.
New York, June, 1887.