What I am, as a poet, must be left to a scrutinizing public. If these poems should come before the Literati, the Reviewer, or the self-created Critic, whose business and whose delight it is, to find faults, and to declaim Columbia's Muse; and within whose falcon claws many useful and aspiring geniuses have suffered a painful and lingering death; they should remember who I am, and whence I came. By reading the preceding sketch, they may learn that I was born in obscurity, and have struggled into their notice only by nature's force.

      I have read no language but my own, and have traveled no land but the land of FREEMEN. Their country has a long sea-side strand, indented with noble rivers, bays and harbors, where ride a thousand gallant vessels, ladened with the riches of the globe, interspersed with towns and cities, [125] whose lofty spires and magnificent structures, bespeak an enterprizing and patriotic nation. Their country has its mountains too, stretching from one boundary to the other, where nature has played her wildest freaks, and exhibited her most gigantic wonders. Their country has its Western forests, where awful solitude reigns--its beauteous plains, where variegated flowers and roses bloom as far as eye explores--its copious rivers pouring from unknown lands to the ocean. Here beauty, variety and sublimity, unite and constitute the most propitious land on the face of nature. This is the country I have traveled--the only field which has furnished my imagery, and inspired my muse.

      I have been constrained, for years past, to court the muses with assiduity and great delight; but dare not say that one of them has deigned to smile on me! I have courted them, not so much in Libraries, as in the lonesome mountains, and the diversified fields of nature. Not within the walls of Colleges; but among the grass-grown graves of the dead, and the silent tomb stones. [126] Not so much in the cities and the world's gay bustle, as along the moss-grown banks of the meadow streams, or on the margin of the babbling brooks, that play along the sequestered wilds. There have I seen them lave their snow-white limbs in the lucid wave; but coy of my approach have frequently retired beyond my ascent the towering steeps of great Parnassus. Oft have I pursued their flight till clouds and frowning shades have hid them from my view. Oft have I searched in their frequented and solitary haunts, their fairy traces, and bowry seats, among the ivies, the cyprus shades, and green woods, till I, as oft, have became [sic] bewildered, exhausted and hopeless!

      And were it not for the infinite pleasure I feel in gaining a distant and transient glimpse of the soul transporting form of famed URANIA, I would long since, have ceased my overtures in utter despair. But she has fascinated me. By some magic spell she has wooed me to her haunts, where, at distance I sit in silent but pleasing melancholy, and listen to the illimitable notes [127] that fill her varied song. The melting music that warbles in her airs, has thrilled through my veins, and inspired in me a rude imitation of her soul-entrancing carols.

      I have not mused in silent halls, without the cares and wants of life to interrupt my meditations, nor have I written these poems where ease and books and literary friends have surrounded me; but in the midst of oppressive trials, cares, and wants--on the side of the road, when weary and hungry--on the banks of rivers, or on the mountain's top; or when I could retire a moment from the clamors of a strange family, or steal a welcome hour from hard manual labor, the most of them have been brought forth. [128]

[LTGL 125-128]