on such as represent and symbolize the main current of it.
Themes, however, on which able or popular song is already extant,--notably
in case of Scotland,--I have in general avoided. In the rendering, my
desire has been always to rest the poetry of each Vision on its own
intrinsic interest; to write with a straightforward eye to the object
alone; not studious of ornament for ornament's sake; allowing the least
possible overt intrusion of the writer's personality; and, in accordance
with lyrical law, seeking, as a rule, to fix upon some factual picture
for each poem.

* * * * *

To define, thus, the scope of what this book attempts, is, in itself, a
confession of presumptuousness,--the writer's own sense of which is but
feebly and imperfectly expressed in the words from Vergil's letter to
Augustus prefixed as my motto. In truth, so rich and so wide are the
materials, that to scheme a lyrical series which should really paint the
_Gesta Anglorum_ in their fulness might almost argue 'lack of wit,'
_vitium mentis_, in much greater powers than mine. No criticism, however
severe, can add to my own consciousness how far the execution of the
work, in regard to each of its aims, falls below the plan. Yet I would
allow myself the hope, great as the deficiencies may be, that the love of
truth and the love of England are mine by inheritance in a degree
sufficient to exempt this book, (the labour of several years), from
infidelity to either:--that the intrinsic worth and weight of my subject
may commend these songs, both at home, and in the many Englands beyond
sea, to those who, (despite the inevitably more engrossing attractions of
the Present, and the emphatic bias of modern culture towards the
immediate and the tangible), maintain that high and soul-inspiring
interest which, identifying us with our magnificent Past, and all its
varied lessons of defeat and victory, offers at the same time,--under the
guidance from above,--our sole secure guarantee for prosperous and
healthy progress in the Future.

The world has cycles in its course, when all
That once has been, is acted o'er again;

and only the nation which, at each moment of political or social
evolution, looks lovingly backward to its own painfully-earned
experience--_Respiciens_, _Prospiciens_, as Tennyson's own chosen device
expresses it--has solid reason to hope, that its movement is true
Advance--that its course is Upward.

* * * * *

It remains only to