My prayers my tears my wishes fears and lamentations were witnessed by myself and heaven alone. When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves for which we can obtain and seek no sympathy from any living creature and which yet we cannot or will not wholly crush we often naturally seek relief in poetryand often find it toowhether in the effusions of others which seem to harmonize with our existing case or in our own attempts to give utterance to those thoughts and feelings in strains less musical perchance but more appropriate and therefore more penetrating and sympathetic and for the time more soothing or more powerful to rouse and to unburden the oppressed and swollen heart.
