PREFACE
I have always thought that one should write poetry only as one dies; that is to say, at the last extremity and when it is impossible to do otherwise. And yet, after some three-and-twenty years of much refraining, I find myself possessed of a considerable volume of Collected Poems, to say nothing of that larger quantity of verse disseminated in the waste-paper baskets of London, Paris, Italy, Touraine, Auvergne. By no means all my published poems are reprinted here; I have retained such as seemed to me the best. In sending them out to affront the world anew, with some fresh companions, I have carefully re-considered them all, revised the greater part, and re-written a good many. I have hesitated under what name to publish them, and, persuaded that no reader will remember two foreign names, in addition to an English one, I have reverted to that which I bore when first I wrote them. Mary James Darmesteter has no longer a right to exist. As regards the English public, Madame Duclaux has given no proof of her existence; she has, she hopes, before her a modest future of French prose, and leaves her English verses to Mary Robinson.
I send forth this little book with scant expectance of immediate success. Entirely lyrical, intellectual, or romantic, these little poems must sound as the merest
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