The poem which enters into the title of this volume, owes its existence to a recent opportunity of personal intercourse with that sect of Christians, who acknowledge Zinzendorff as their founder; and who, in their labors of self-denying benevolence, and their avoidance of the slight, yet bitter causes, of controversy, have well preserved that sacred test of discipleship, "to love one another."

Many of the poems, in the present collection, were suggested by the passing and common incidents of life. If, in their elements, there is a deficiency of the "wonderful and wild," it is hoped they will not be found destitute of that moral essence, which springs ​up as freshly in the trodden vale, as on the cliff where the cloud settles.

Should it be objected that too great a proportion of them are elegiac, the required apology would fain clothe itself in the language of the gifted Lord Bacon: "If we listen to David's harp, we shall find as many hearse-like harmonies, as carols; and the pencil of Inspiration hath more labored to describe the afflictions of Job, than the felicities of Solomon."
⁠L. H. S.

⁠Hartford, Conn. Sept. 1835.