PREFACE. THIS is the author's twelfth volume of prose and verse, which he has published on his own responsibility, at a personal risk to himself of not less than eight hundred pounds: no inconsiderable sum for a labouring man to raise for the sale of books, who has had to work for his daily bread ever since he was nine years of age. But he has loved literature for its own sake, pursuing it under manifold outward disadvantages, encouraged sometimes by the hand of friendship, intent to benefit rather than to amuse mankind. In addition to the twelve volumes already named, he has written some forty tracts on subjects both social and religious, which have been published separately by different houses. Throughout his severe struggle from his early mining days, when he thoughtfully followed his father to and from his work, or hummed his verses sitting upon a mossy bank of the moorland previously to pencilling them on paper, to the present advanced period of his life, hope has sustained him in the conflict, as he well knows that God is the Giver of every good gift. Poetry has been his chief pursuit in summer and winter, in joy and sorrow, even from childhood to declining age; though now and then he has given his leisure time to writing prose. And how ardently, lovingly, and perseveringly he has followed his song-promptings, some of the critiques will explain at the end of this collection. The writer is conscious that the poems in the present publication have but little claim to merit, except perhaps for their own native simplicity. He has written them more with a desire to do good than to seek honour; and he trusts that in this respect their end may be realized. Like those in his previous volumes, published between the years 1858 and the present period, they have mostly been composed out of doors, in the lanes and fields, among old rocks and ruins and solitary dells. A few of the minor pieces have been printed in some of the periodicals of the day, and others have been denied admittance. |