WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.

Poetry. Vol. V.

EDITED BY
ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE, M.A.,
HON. F.R.S.L.

LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
1901.

PREFACE TO THE FIFTH VOLUME.

The plays and poems contained in this volume were written within the
space of two years--the last two years of Byron's career as a poet. But
that was not all. Cantos VI.-XV. of _Don Juan_, _The Vision of
Judgment_, _The Blues_, _The Irish Avatar_, and other minor poems,
belong to the same period. The end was near, and, as though he had
received a warning, he hastened to make the roll complete.

Proof is impossible, but the impression remains that the greater part of
this volume has been passed over and left unread by at least two
generations of readers. Old play-goers recall Macready as "Werner," and
many persons have read _Cain_; but apart from students of literature,
readers of _Sardanapalus_ and of _The Two Foscari_ are rare; of _The Age
of Bronze_ and _The Island_ rarer still. A few of Byron's later poems
have shared the fate of Southey's epics; and, yet, with something of
Southey's persistence, Byron believed that posterity would weigh his
"regular dramas" in a fresh balance, and that his heedless critics
would kick the beam. But "can these bones live"? Can dramas which
excited the wondering admiration of Goethe and Lamartine and Sir Walter
Scott touch or lay hold of the more adventurous reader of the present
day? It is certain that even the half-forgotten works of a great and
still popular poet, which have left their mark on the creative
imagination of the poets and playwrights of three quarters of a century,
will always be studied by the few from motives of curiosity, or for
purposes of reference; but it is improbable, though not impossible, that
in the revolution of taste and sentiment, moribund or extinct poetry
will be born again into the land of the living. Poetry which has never
had its day, such as Blake's _Songs of Innocence_, the _Lyrical
Ballads_, or Fitzgerald's _Omar Khayyam_, may come, in due time, to be
recognized at its full worth; but it is a harder matter for a poem which
has lost its vogue to recapture the interest and enthusias