NARRATIVE POEMS. CAPTAIN SWORD AND CAPTAIN PEN. WITH NOTES DETAILING THE HORRORS ON WHICH THE POEM IS FOUNDED. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION. THIS Poem is the result of a sense of duty, which has taken the Author from quieter studies, during a great public crisis. He obeyed the impulse with joy, because it took the shape of verse; but with more pain, on some accounts, than he chooses to express. However, he has done what he conceived himself bound to do; and if every zealous lover of his species were to express his feelings in like manner, to the best of his ability, individual opinions, little in themselves, would soon amount to an overwhelming authority, and hasten the day of reason and beneficence. The measure is regular, with an irregular aspect,-four accents in a verse,-like that of Christabel, or some of the poems of Sir Walter Scott: Captain Sword got up one day And the flag full of honour, as though it could feel. He mentions this, not, of course, for readers in general, but for the sake of those daily acceders to the list of the reading public, whose knowledge of books is not yet equal to their love of them. |