DEDICATION

To you the offering of this thought,

The greeting of my poetry,

To you this work of solitude,

O slaves of din and vanity.

In silence did my sad sigh name

You Cecilys unmet by me,

All of you Psyches without wings,

Mute sisters of my soul!

God grant you, unknown family,

One sacred dream mid sinful lies,

In the prison of this narrow life

Just one brief burst of that other life.

September 1846