Preface
The poems here recorded, have been the production of a few leisure hours, snatched at intervals from a life of hurry and concern ; and they are collected, less in the hope of gaining even a poet's immortality, than with the view of obliging several friends, who, for some time have insisted on their publication. In fact, had it not been for the threat of one, for whom the author entertains a high regard, that he would publish upon his own responsibility such of his pieces as he could collect, it is highly probable that the public would have been spared the infliction of the present volume and the author the disasters that await the scribbler, who in the season of storm, dares venture his bark upon the troubled waves of a literary sea. 1*
VI PREFACE.
While engaged in writing the poems, no thought of future fame obtruded to mar the pleasures of composition, which have been adequate to the labor expended in their production. They are the offsprings of the heart ; their errors those of an inoffensive muse, which however, is as independent as unpretending, and presents its efforts alike to "cormorant and commoner," expecting each without "favor or affection" to dispose of them according to his pleasure.
CONTENTS pa<;e.
Tricmpii of Liberty,— pronounced before the Associated Literary and Scientific Societies of Baltimore— at their anniversary, celebrated on the Fourth of July,
1838,
The Sires of Seventy-Six, .... 44
Gcenever,— in two parts— a ballad in the style of the old English writers. Part I. ... 45
Part II. . • M My First New Hat, 66
The American Eagle, • 69
Beech Hill 84
The Maiden's Test, ... 90
The Night of Death, 97
The Past, the Present, and the Future, . • 104
Brutus, 106
Love's Appeal, . . • .107
V1U
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