PREFACE TO WESSEX POEMS
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F the miscellaneous collection of verse that follows, only four pieceshave been published, though many were written long ago, and other partlywritten. In some few cases the verses were turned into prose and printedas such, it having been unanticipated at that time that they might seethe light. Whenever an ancient and legitimate word of the district, for which therewas no equivalent in received English, suggested itself as the mostnatural, nearest, and often only expression of a thought, it has beenmade use of, on what seemed good grounds. The pieces are in a large degree dramatic or personative in conception;and this even where they are not obviously so. The dates attached to some of the poems do not apply to the roughsketches given in illustration, which have been recently made, and, asmay be surmised, are inserted for personal and local reasons rather thanfor their intrinsic qualities.
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