POEMS. BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. THIRD EDITION. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 1853. Dedication. TO MY FATHER. WHEN your eyes fall upon this page of dedication, and you start to see to whom it is inscribed, your first thought will be of the time far off when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you who were my public and my critic. Of all that such a recollection implies of saddest and sweetest to both of us, it would become neither of us to speak before the world: nor would it be possible for us to speak of it to one another, with voices that did not falter. Enough, that what is in my heart when I write thus, will be fully known to yours. And my desire is that you, who are a witness how if this art of poetry had been a less earnest object to me, it must have fallen from exhausted hands before this day,-that you, who have shared with me in things bitter and sweet, softening or enhancing them, every day,—that you, who hold with |