derful of literary epochs, the Elizabethan age, are now
practically obsolete, while the poetical efforts remain in some
instances with increased prominence.

Someone, (although just who is difficult to determine,--though it savors
of the Greek School of Philosophy,--)has delivered the following
injunction: "Do right because it is right, not from fear of punishment
or hope of reward." Waiving the question as to whether it is right or
not to compose poetry, he who aspires in that direction can reasonably
expect no material recompense, though the experience of Dante,
Cervantes, Leigh Hunt, and others, proves conclusively that poets do not
always escape punishment. In fact, about the only emolument to be
expected is the gratification of an inherent and indefinable impulse,
which impels one to the task with equal force, whether the ultimate
result be affluence or a dungeon.

The author of this unpretentious volume has long questioned the
advisability of adding a book to our already inflated and overloaded
literature, unless it should contain something in the nature of a
deviation from beaten literary paths.

Whether the reading public will regard this as such or not is a question
for the future to determine, as every book is a creature of
circumstance, and at the date of its publication an algebraic unknown
quantity.

It was not the original intention of the author to publish any of his
effusions in collective form until more mature years and riper judgment
should better qualify him for the task of composition, and should enable
him to still further pursue the important studies of etymology,
rhetoric, Latin and Greek, and complete the education which youthful
environment denied.

On the 17th of March, A.D. 1900, occurred an accident in the form of a
premature mining explosion which banished the light of the Colorado sun
from his eyes forever, adding the almost insurmountable barrier of
total and hopeless blindness to those of limited means and insufficient
education. At first further effort seemed useless, but as time
meliorates in some degree even the most deplorable and distressing
physical conditions, ambition slowly rallied, and while lying for
several months a patient in various hospitals in an ineffectual attempt
to regain even partial sight, the following ideas and efforts of past
years were gradually recalled from the recesses of memory, and reduced
to their present form, in which, with no small hesitation and