Excerpt from The Golden Treasury Selected From the Best Songs and Lyrical, Poems in the English Language, and Arranged With Notes But this plan proved impossible. A decided pre ference for Lyrical poetry, - to which in all ages the perplexed or overburdened heart has fled for relief and confession, - has shown itself for sixty years or more; an impulse traceable in large measure to the increasingly subjective temper of the age, and indeed already in different phases foreshown by Shelley and by Wordsworth. From this preference (whilst the national or commemorative Ode has become rare), followed also a vast extension in length of our lyrics their work is apt to be less concentrated than that of their best predecessors, classical or English whilst, concurrently, they have at the same time often taken a dramatic character, rarely to be found before; though Dryden's Alexander's Feast and Gray's Bard are splendid exceptions in our earlier poetry. Lastly, while during the first quarter of the century Keats, Shelley, Byron, died in actual or comparative youth, within my present range England has been favoured with the long lives and persistent powers of our two most eminent singers, whilst few of real promise have been cut off prematurely. 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.