The presence and influence of these powers is to me no new or recent occurrence, although I may not have understood them in the same light as I do at present. They have formed a part of all my past life, and I can trace the evidence of spiritual assistance running like a golden thread through all my intellectual efforts. As I do not desire to practise any deception upon the public, but on the contrary only wish to declare the simple truth, I have published in this volume quite a number of poems, written several years previous to my appearance before the public as a medium or a speaker. Although these were mostly wrought out of my brain by the slow process of thought, yet for some of these, even, I can claim as direct and special an inspiration as for those delivered upon the platform. The first poem in this present work,--“The Prayer of the Sorrowing,”--and that which immediately succeeds it,--“The Song of Truth,”--containing in itself an answer to the Prayer, were given to me under peculiar circumstances. The first was the language of my own soul, intensified by an occasion of great mental anguish. The second, following directly upon it, was an illumination of my entire being, when I seemed to have wept away the scales from my eyes, and “by the deep conflict of my soul in prayer,” to have broken the fetters of my mortality, and stepped forth into that freedom whereby I stood face to face with the ministering spirits, and heard that “Song of Truth” sounding through the universe. I have only known but few such visitations in my lifetime, but when they have come, I have felt that I have taken a free, deep breath of celestial air, and caught a glimpse of the Realities of Things. As an immediate consequence, my spirit has become braver and stronger, and long after my inward vision was closed, the cheering light of that blessed revelation has lingered in my heart.