University of Virginia Library

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3

PREFACE.

Having been called upon to contribute something to the department of Negro Literature at Paris during the World's Fair, and feeling ashamed of the feeble efford which I have made heretofore in literary work; I now present to the public a selection of late poems, taken from a larger book which I have written but, owing to extreme poverty, have been unable to put into print. Therefore if the public will condescend to look with favor upon these few poems—if poems they may be called—I promise ere long, in my “Depth of the Infinite” to present to the world a better piece of literature.