Excerpt from The King's Sacrifice, and Other Poems From the dates appended to one or two of these poems, the Reader will perceive that the volume before him is, as a whole, the fruit of mature life. Nothing very juvenile has been admitted, and everything has been so carefully revised that the inexperience of youth cannot be pleaded in extenuation of faults. I do not say that everything is just as I would write it now; but there is a point at which it is necessary to withhold the hand, especially in the revision of early work, and I have withheld mine then, and then only, when I felt that I had nothing to hope from additional labour. Inequalities, and diversities of aim and influence, will of necessity make themselves evident to the critical Reader in a work thus composed, but if, by a volume so miscellaneous, I lay myself unusually open to adverse criticism, there is one advantage which I hope to reap. 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.