Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/90

 82 INTRODUCTION

FRIENDSHIP.

1. Why yearns my soul, what void is here? No cares, no sorrows vex my mind, Yet Hope lags arm in arm with Fear : Something I seek I cannot find.

2. It is not power, pleasure, gold, That I would seek my soul to free From loneliness that rests untold. But I would have sweet sympathy.

3. As the deep sea reflects the sky, As in a glass forms reappear, So in some heart would I descry The image of my Hope and Fear.

4. O Nature, thou art mild and fair, Thy woods and streams, thy hills and vales. Yet I alone could not live there Amidst thy fairest, sweetest dales.

5. If love be absent, even thy lay. Sweet thrush, can lend mine ear no charm ; Like sunshine on a wintry day. It gilds my life, but cannot warm.

6. Not mine the love that fades and dies And perishes within an hour. Nor mine the friend that timid flies, When threatened by misfortune's power :

7. But love that lasts, calm, warm, and bright, Through green age and through gray — That beam divine which, like thy light. Sweet Truth, survives decay.

8. O Love, when bowed by sorrow low. By weakness led to sin. Then thou canst teach us back to go, Canst lead us back to Him.