Excerpt from The New Era: A Dramatic Poem The scheme of the celestial spheres discussed in the opening scene of this poem, rests upon a belief in the necessary relation and corres pondence of the Visible and invisible domains of nature, the responsive realms of one mar vellons and mystical whole; a subtle and ex quisite theory which has already received a certain amount of support from philosophical and scientific inquirers, and which here at least is accepted without reserve. The knowledge which we can now claim to possess of the plu tality of worlds - the very doctrine, by the way, which Giordano Bruno, whose noble words stand upon my title page, was burnt to death for proclaiming - renders it inevitable almost, if we believe at all in a future life, that we should admit the corresponding fact of a plurality of heavens. This hypothesis is adopted in the accompanying poem, and the sphere which is its theatre of action is presented as the heaven merely of our own planet. 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.