 | Three Hundred Sonnets |  |
57
LETTERS.
Tear, scatter, burn, destroy,—but keep them not;I hate, I dread those living witnesses
Of varying self, of good or ill forgot,
Of alter'd hopes, and wither'd kindnesses:
Oh, call not up those shadows of the dead,
Those visions of the past, that idly blot
The present with regret for blessings fled:
This hand that wrote, this ever-teeming head,
This flickering heart is full of chance and change;
I would not have you watch my weaknesses,
Nor how my foolish likings roam and range,
Nor how the mushroom friendships of a day
Hastened in hotbed ripeness to decay,
Nor how to mine own self I grow so strange.
| Three Hundred Sonnets | |