PREFACE.

JUST twenty-five years since Douglas Jerrold invited Baby May to make her first public appearance in his Shilling Magazine. It was undoubtedly 'a success.'

The time has come for celebrating her twentyfifth birthday. She owns to reappearing in the holiday dress of the toned paper and ample margins of a Library Edition, with a not unnatural glow of female satisfaction. Yet she is anxious not to separate herself from the many, her oldest friends. She retains for every-day wear her old apparel of a Shilling People's Edition. She trusts in that to revisit the many homes to which she has been hitherto so warmly welcomed, and to find her way to those where she has as yet been only introduced in casual meetings in the corners of Journals, the pages of Magazines, and Selections from the Poets. Years since it was said she had had the curious fortune to be seen in almost every newspaper published in the English language. has not only been quoted, she has been remembered.

She

I have lazily allowed her to retire from bookland for some time, yet she has retained her hold upon the

memories and affections of the public, not only at home, but in America, Australia, and our Colonies.

It is time for her to recognise this proof of the goodwill of critics and the public by reappearing as she now does, as she hopes, for a permanent existence. Yet she cannot, nor can her sister Home Poems, claim to have received an equal tribute of admiration to that which 'The Worn Wedding-Ring' won for itself. That was adopted by a somewhat over-affectionate Canadian, who did not hesitate to assume to himself the responsibility of its authorship, and sent it through the newspapers of the Great Dominion with his own name attached to it. Could he have more clearly shown his sense of its merits?

I send out these new editions of my Home Poems, my Ballads, and Narrative Poems, with little hesitation as to their reception. They won at their first appearance the warmest welcome from Landor and Dickens, Hawthorne and Thackeray, Horace Smith and John Forster, Bulwer and Ruskin, Whittier and Holmes, and · most of the best-known English authors of our time. Critics have been curiously unanimous in their praise, and the public have endorsed their opinion. So I say to these children of my fancy, blossom again in the sunshine of publicity, and may you carry pure affection and happy thoughts to all. Of the People, my highest ambition is to live in the memories and on the lips of the People.

HYDE COTTAGE, GREENWICH :

June 14, 1875.

W. C. BENNETT.

Choruses from an unfinished Tragedy on the Fall of Messenia. 183

Younger? yes, but then not clung to
With the love that folds you now,
Then when those eyes first I sung to,
When unlined was that dear brow;
Then, perhaps, that step was lighter;
Let Time take all it can claim;
Still our love but burns the brighter;
Still our hearts are all the same.

Older? Yes, but only dearer,

Loved more deeply with each day,
Nay, your beauty grows but clearer
As its radiance fades away;
Older? dearer with each morrow,
Dearer through all joy, all pain;
Deeplier loved through smiles and sorrow
And hopes shared, though hoped in vain.

What have years the power of taking?
What has Time the might to harm?
To these fond eyes, is he making
Aught he changes lose a charm?
Touched alone to something rarer,
Beauty into beauty dies,
Changed to what is holier, fairer,
Dearer to these doting eyes.

Can I in those eyes be gazing

And see not how years have given Less of earth for my fond praising, But, oh! how much more of heaven! Softened with a saintly fairness,

More divine look lip and brow, All transfigured to a rareness Never seen, dear wife, till now.

B