The Sonnets of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman | ||
158
[Let me give something!—as the years unfold]
Let me give something!—as the years unfold,Some faint fruition, though not much, my most:
Perhaps a monument of labour lost.
But Thou, who givest all things, give not me
To sink in silence, seared with early cold,
Frost-burnt and blackened, but quick fire for frost!—
As once I saw at a houseside, a tree
Struck scarlet by the lightning, utterly
To its last limb and twig. So strange it seemed,
I stopped to think if this indeed were May.
And were those windflowers?—or had I dreamed? . . .
But there it stood, close by the cottage eaves,
Red-ripened to the heart: shedding its leaves
And autumn sadness on the dim spring day.
The Sonnets of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman | ||