AND OTHER POEMS.

BY JAMES NICOLSON,

Author of "WILLIE WAUGH," &c.

WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTICE BY THE REV. ALEXR. MACLEOD,

Minister of John Street United Presbyterian Church, Glasgow.

PREFACE.

I

PREFACES-especially to poetical productions-are not unfrequently looked upon as apologies for what is to follow; among such, the reader will please not to include mine. Nor would I have the Introductory Notice, so kindly furnished by my friend and literaryno less than spiritual-father, looked upon as an apology for the contents of the present volume. believe, with the gifted Poet of the Mine, that poetry, if it be genuine, will live, and, if not, it will die—and, perhaps, the sooner the better. But I do not, like him, claim to have my productions weighed apart from my circumstances, seeing that out of these they have, in a manner, been churned. True, the waves of circumstances do often cast up mire and dirt, but they also reveal bits of shining coral and finely polished shells, among which may occasionally be found a pearl. The reader will find little in the following pages to dazzle the intellect, or kindle the imagination; nothing of that lightning poetry that leaps, sword-like, from its sheath of darkness to smite

the adamantine soul of the world, which, notwithstanding, moves on, in its usual way, refusing to be electrified. I have written from and for the heart, rather than the head, believing that, with all our boasted intellectual progress, the culture of this portion of our being lags very much behind; and sure am I, that no one will grudge me work-room in a field so large, and where so much remains to be done.

JAMES NICOLSON.

March, 1863.