This poem, though new in the sense of being now for the first time printed, was written some four years ago, about the same date as the Hound of Heaven in my former volume.

One image in the Proem was an unconscious plagiarism from the beautiful image in Mr.Patmore's St.Valentine's Day:-"O baby Spring, That flutter'st sudden 'neath the breast of Earth, A month before the birth!"Finding I could not disengage it without injury to the passage in which it is embedded, I have preferred to leave it, with this acknowledgment to a Poet rich enough to lend to the poor.

FRANCIS THOMPSON, 1895

SISTER SONGS--An Offering to Two Sisters