The Poem now presented to the Public occupied little more than six months in the composition.  That period has been devoted to the task with unremitting ardour and enthusiasm.  I have exercised a watchful and earnest criticism on my work as it grew under my hands.  I would willingly have sent it forth to the world with that perfection which long labour and revision is said to bestow.  But I found that, if I should gain something in exactness by this method, I might lose much of the newness and energy of imagery and language as it flowed fresh from my mind.  And, although the mere composition occupied no more than six months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many years.

I trust that the reader will carefully distinguish between those opinions which have a dramatic propriety in reference to the characters which they are designed to elucidate, and such as are properly my own.  The erroneous and degrading idea which men have conceived of a Supreme Being, for instance, is spoken against, but not the Supreme Being itself.  The belief which some superstitious persons whom I have brought upon the stage entertain of the Deity, as injurious to the character of his benevolence, is widely different from my own.  In recommending also a great and important change in the spirit which animates the social institutions of mankind, I have avoided all flattery to those violent and malignant passions of our nature which are ever on the watch to mingle with and to alloy the most beneficial innovations.  There is no quarter given to Revenge, or Envy, or Prejudice.  Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral world.

DEDICATION.

There is no danger to a man that knows
What life and death is:  there’s not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.—­CHAPMAN.

TO MARY —­ —.

1. 
So now my summer-task is ended, Mary,
And I return to thee, mine own heart’s home;
As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faery,
Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome;
Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become 5
A star among the stars of mortal night,
If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom,
Its doubtful promise thus I would unite
With thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light.

2. 
The toil which stole from thee so many an hour, 10
Is ended,—­and the fruit is at thy feet! 
No longer where the woods to frame a bower
With interlaced branches mix and meet,
Or where with sound like many voices sweet,
Waterfalls leap among wild islands green, 15
Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat
Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen;
But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been.