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.