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MIDNIGHT MUSINGS:

BEING

A COLLECTION

OF

POEMS

ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS..

THOUGHTS that voluntary move

Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid,
Tunes her nocturnal note.

MILTON,

DEMERARA:

PRINTED AT THE COURIER OFFICE, 18, SOUTH-STREET,

BODLEIAR

10 7 1905

LIBRARY

PREFACE.

IN offering to his fellow-Colonists a volume of Poems, principally composed among them, the Author would have been well pleased to have let them stand or fall by their own merit, had he been satisfied with the execution of what may be termed the mechanical part of the performance-which, as it is the least exalted, is undoubtedly the most tedious and irksome :-the revision and correction for the Press, of that which has been negligently composed in the first instance. This, however, with regard to Works (and especially Poetical ones) subject to public criticism, is more important than perhaps it appears to be; and the Author, in making his first appearance, feels a characteristic nervousness which has induced him to preface the Work with a few observations, intended as a propitiation for many errors and negligences, which he himself is most ready to admit may be fairly charged on the few Poems now published. And first, without meaning to compare himself in any other way with the lamented

ii

FREFACE.

KIRKE WHITE, he can with truth make use of his own

expressive words :

For me the day

Hath duties which require the vigorous hand

Of steadfast application, but which leave

No deep improving trace upon the mind.
But be the day another's-let it pass

The night's my own; they cannot steal my night!

IT has been chiefly in the night season that the Author has taken from the hours allotted to repose, and amused himself with the composition of these Poemsthus "lengthening his days by stealing a few hours from the night;" and it will be allowed, he trusts, as some palliation for any carelessness or undue haste that may be discerned in them, that to the performance he has generally not brought a mind as free from the ordinary thoughts of every-day life, as is required for that play, of fancy or of feeling, of which a candidate for Poetical honours ought always to be in possession; this also must be his excuse for the general sombre and melancholy tone which pervades most of his Poetry; which, it may be, has derived its gloomy hue from the surrounding darkness and solitude which have invariably attended these midnight musings.

THE Author feels that another charge may be brought against him-namely, that in a Work written by a Demerarian, composed and published in the Colony, there is not one Poem which possesses the charm of

PREFACE.

iii

allusion to local events; nor is there any one trait by which to tell whether it'was written in Demerara or on Greenland's icy mountains. To this he can only reply, that the Colony, though fertile in every thing else, is barren in incidents for poetical display-not having the haze of antiquity to shroud, and yet beautify, the records of past generations: and not possessing the novelty of a lately discovered country, on the present beauty or future prospects of which, the mind would delight to expatiate.

MANY of the Pieces have already appeared under different signatures in the Guiana Chronicle and Demerara Courier, but the greater portion has never been yet published; and they are now offered to public notice, not without a hope that others also may be induced to dedicate their leisure hours to the pursuit, spend them in the attainment, and reap the reward in the rich enjoyment of those intellectual pleasures, which are

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Sought without a crime,
And leave no stain upon the wing of time."

DEMERARA, let December, 1832,

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