Page:Poems - volume 1 - EBBrowning (1844).pdf/17

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PREFACE.

The collection here offered to the public, consists of Poems which have been written in the interim between the period of the publication of my 'Seraphim' and the present; variously coloured, or perhaps shadowed, by the life of which they are the natural expression,—and, with the exception of a few contributions to English or American periodicals, are printed now for the first time.

As the first poem of this collection, the 'Drama of Exile,' is the longest and most important work (to me!) which I ever trusted into the current of publication, I may be pardoned for entreating the reader's attention to the fact, that I decided on publishing it after considerable hesitation and doubt. The subject of the Drama rather fastened on me than