Handbill printed poem 'THE DREAM HARP', together with Two Autograph Letters Signed to Miss Christiana Rafn of Copenhagen.

Symington (1825-98), a minor Scottish poet, traveller and author, spent a year in America and edited a selection of President Garfield's speeches, and thus was accorded an entry in Appleton's Cyclopaedia. The poem (four pages, 12mo, on bifoliate, very good with light spotting and staining) is printed in blue, with an engraving in black of (according to the poem) 'a Harp [...] of rare beauty [...] On either side, an alabaster Cross | Of snowy whiteness twined with dew-sprent flowers' and a 'white Dove with an olive branch [...] | Descending'. It is a conventionally-religious account, in blank verse of a vision of how, 'though the chords and colours Seven, had streamed | Into my tranced soul, One ray of Light | From the Seventh Heavens'. LETTER ONE (four pages, 12mo, good, though with faded text and light spotting) thanks Miss Rafn for the 'publication in commemoration of your late distinguished father' (the archaeologist Carl Christian Rafn, 1795-1864). Discussions of packages to be sent by Miss Rafn for 'the two libraries' at Glasgow, and for Dr David Mackinlay and Symington himself, 'as commerative of [Rafn's] Centenary'. 'As to America - please make up in same way a few to Gen. James Grant Wilson L.L.D. D.C.L. &c - a few to F W. Hoyt Esq - and what you can spare for a library in New York (to be chosen by Gen Wilson). [...] I have not been very well and am in D[octo]rs. hands [...]'. In LETTER TWO (three pages, 12mo, grubby, stained and discoloured) Symington explains that he is suffering from 'a bad cold'. States that the two libraries in Glasgow mentioned in the previous letter are the Mitchell ('a grand Library') and the Stirling. 'I called on both the librarians and they were both willing to share the expense of carriage from Copenhagen.' Discusses the other recipients he has suggested. Both letters signed 'A J Symington'.