PREFACE
In preparing this edition of Mathilde Blind's Poetical Works, I have rearranged the contents of her five published volumes in a way that I think she would have approved. Having been appointed, in conjunction with Mr. Ludwig Mond, her literary executor, I made a selection from her poems in 1897, which was published in a small volume, and I now complete a task which has been a pleasure, in the issue of a complete collected edition of her poems. No poems of any importance have been found among her papers since her death, and I have only met with one poem in a magazine, so that this edition is practically a reprint of the following volumes: The Prophecy of St. Oran, and other Poems, 1882; The Heather on Fire, 1886; The Ascent of Man, 1889; Dramas in Miniature, 1891; Birds of Passage: Songs of the Orient and Occident, 1895; together with the few additional poems contained in the selection called Songs and Sonnets, 1893. I have followed the text of these volumes scrupulously, occasionally altering the punctuation where it was clearly wrong. In one instance only have I made any variation from the printed text. A
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