Excerpt from The Difference, and Other Poems: Including the Columbian Ode The author of the Columbian Ode grew up in a world which appeared to her not only warless but dedicated to a wise future of peaceful development - for the Franco Prussian war of twenty years earlier seemed, to the imagination of youth, almost as remote an object-lesson as Napoleon's conquests. War was not a reality, but a legend, to her consciousness; and the prophetic optimism at the climax of the ode was not merely a mood inspired by the splendid international courtesies of the great festival, but the sincere utterance of a young poet's pro found faith in the future brotherhood of nations and of men - a brotherhood potent, beyond all imagining, for the loosing of creative energy in vast works and marvellous discoveries. The Diference, written thirty years later, shows not only a change of opinion and feeling from youth to middle-age. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.