Page:Ethel Churchill 1.pdf/170

164 to be the solace of a thousand lonely hours—to cheer the weary moments of sickness, to fling a charm around even nature. How many are there to whom, in long after years, your name will come like a note of music, who will love and honour you, because you have awakened within them thoughts and feelings which stir the loftiest dreams and the sweetest pulses of their nature! The poet's life is one of want and suffering, and often of mortification—mortification, too, that comes terribly home; but far be it from me to say, that it has not its own exceeding great reward. It may be late in coming, but the claim on universal sympathy is at last allowed. The future, glorious and calm, brightens over the grave; and then, for the present, the golden world of imagination is around it. Not an emotion of your own beating heart, but it is recorded in music. Walter Maynard felt neither his poverty nor his seclusion. He was living in the old heroic time; the brave and the beautiful were at his side, while he gave them high words,