Excerpt from Mountain Idylls: And Other Poems When the above words were written by Solo mon, King of Israel, about three thousand years ago, they were possibly inspired by the existence even at that early period of an extensive and probably overweighted literature. The same literary conditions are as true to day as when the above truism emanated from that most wonderful of all human intellects. Every age and generation, as well as every chang ing religious or political condition, has brought with it its own peculiar and essentially differing current literature, which, as a rule, continued a brief season, and then vanished, perishing with the age and conditions which called it into be ing; leaving, however, an occasional volume, masterpiece, or even quotation, to become classic and in the form of standard literature survive for generations, and in many instances for ages. Poetry has always occupied a unique posit.on in literature; and though from a pecuniary stand point usually unprofitable, it enjoys the decided advantage of longevity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.