Cornell University Library PR 5700.T32 Poems; moral, religious, and miscellaneou 3 1924 013 566 678 The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013566678 H^ii^ms^ MORAL, RELIGIOUS, AND MISCELLANEOUS. BY THE REV. JAMES TWEED, M.A., AUTHOR OF "HOMILIES ON THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT." **One in whose mind the serious and the light Were strangely mixedj like spirits black and white." BY JAMES PARKER AND CO., OXFORD. 1868. PREFACE. T HOPE my reader will bear with a little J- egotism, while I give some account of myself as well as of the poems here presented to him. "Quem legis, ut noris, accipe," as Ovid said, who supposed that his readers would take the more interest in his poems from having made them acquainted with himself. Though I was not "born a poet," I had almost from my birth a predisposition to poetry, and was at least a versifier from my child- hood ; and some lines that I made at a very early age upon a favourite cat brought me into notice with my own family, by whom I had been rather kept in the background. I recited them to my eldest sister, who entered them and others, as I made them, into a little book ; she also corrected my rhymes when they were faulty. My father, who was a sanguine and hopeful man, was much pleased with my verses, and imagined that a versifying child might in tinie PREFACE. develope into a poet. He had a taste for poetry himself, and was familiar with the writings of Milton, Shakspeare, Dryden, Pope, &c., from which he occasionally made apt quotations. That my verses were not good in themselves, he must have known, but he saw in them a promise of something better, and his praise and encouragement led me to write others, which were an improvement upon these. Upon the loss of my twin sister, I ventured to make Death my subject, and wrote a few verses upon it, which were thought " not bad." Soon after, taking a higher flight, I commenced a poem upon the "Invasion," then threatened by the first Napoleon. These I left unfinished upon my removal to school, seeing the length to which they would have led me, and having other things to do. After the battle of Tra- falgar, I took for my subject "The Death of Nelson," and on this completed a poem of from fifty to one hundred lines. It was in blank verse, for I had now learned to admire Milton, whom at a later period I styled "the glorious Milton, grandest of the grand." Indeed so far had I carried my admiration for that great poet, that I had said I would not mind being PREFACE. V blind like Milton to be such a poet as he was. This saying pleased my father, and raised in him expectation of my becoming "something more famous" than I ever became. No doubt I thought that by writing blank verse I was imitating Milton ; it may be well imagined that, except in the absence of rhyme, there was no resemblance between Milton's versification and my own. But now it was time that such conceit should be taken out of me, and this was effectually done when I was removed to Felstead Gram- mar School, where the notion of " a boy setting up for a poet" was unmercifully ridiculed. Hercj though English verses were ignored, Latin ones were required, and by applying to these what- ever of poetical talent I possessed, I obtained that KvSo