Excerpt from Poems of Love and FreedomThe foreword to a small collection of verses must needs be short, else the cart will come before the horse, and be larger; so in making this, my debut in the society of my readers, I should not do much more than make a bow, say a very few words, and retire.I have little to say that has not already been said. I believe that while poetry should always express the idea, it should never sacrifice rhyme or rhythm, for the idea's sake. Thought is its father and music its mother, and with out this union, the issue is illegitimate.In some of the verses which follow, there may be a little of music, and in many, the expressions of the inv dividual and not of the multitude, and yet if these ex pressions have - come out of the heart of one who has experienced the heights and depths of feeling, they may be of some value to the reading public.To feel deeply is to live fully, and to sing of what we see and feel and think, is, I believe, in most cases, better than to argue it out in lurid declamation or cold prose. If I shall have lightened one heavy heart, or let the warm, bright sun into the dark chambers of the soul of one man or woman, I feel I shall not have written in vain.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.