Excerpt from Poems and Prose Writings, Vol. 2 of 2 To this corner I retire at the shutting in of day for self-examination and amendment. It is here that I sit in the shadow of a melancholy mind, and see pass be fore me, in solemn order, my follies and my crimes, and follow them-with trembling into the portentous uncer tainty of the future. It is here I learn that we must not lean on the world for comfort; it is here that I give myself up to the visions of the mind, and fill the space about me with beings from distant regions and of other times. Here, too, have I looked, with a dream like contemplation, upon the shadows sliding over the wall, silent as sunlight, till they seemed to me as monitors from the land of the dead, who had come in kindness to tell me of the vanity of present things, and of the hastening on of another and an enduring world. 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.