University of Virginia Library

SONNETS.—TO MY FRIEND.

[I. Ambition owns no friend yet be thou mine]

Ambition owns no friend yet be thou mine!—
I have not much to win thee,—yet if song
Born of affection may one name prolong,
My lay shall seek to give a life to thine.
Let this requite thee for the honoring thought
That has forgiven me each capricious mood;
Dealt gently with my phrensies, school'd my blood,
And still with love my sad seclusion sought.
And when the gray sod rises o'er my breast,
Be thou the guardian of my deeds and name,
Defend me from the foes who hunt my fame,—
And, when thou show'st its purity, attest
Mine eye was ever on the sun, and bent,
Where clouds and difficult rocks make steep the great ascent.

[II. Thou wilt remark my fate when I am dead]

Thou wilt remark my fate when I am dead;
Let not fools scoff above me and proclaim
That I had vainly struggled after fame,
'Till the good oil of my young life was shed,
And I became a mockery, and fell
Into the yellow leaf before my time;
A sacrifice, even in my earliest prime,
To that which thinn'd the heavens and peopled hell!
How few will understand us at the best,
How few so yield their sympathies, to know
What cares have robb'd us of our nightly rest,
How stern our trial, how complete our woe,—
And how much more our doom it was than pride,
To toil in devious ways with none who loved beside!