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LINES TO MISS HINKSON.
Whose names, traced before mine, pledge friendship and love,
Pure, ardent, and warm, from the fountain above;
Love, tender and truthful, with flowers interwrought,
Best offering of friendship, the bright flowers of thought;
Mid the verse of the poet, the scholars' array,
Thou hast left me a blank to fill up as I may.
Pure, ardent, and warm, from the fountain above;
Love, tender and truthful, with flowers interwrought,
Best offering of friendship, the bright flowers of thought;
Mid the verse of the poet, the scholars' array,
Thou hast left me a blank to fill up as I may.
Thou hast left it, for me to fill up as I may,
With the warm words of feeling, or dull words of clay;
Thou hast left me a leaf, to be filled with the thought,
The rose- thought of fancy, with dreaminess fraught.
Yet the soul, when it dreams of the warm, absent heart,
Will scarce in the dullness of earth take a part,
But up, soaring upward, through shadow and storm,
Find its home but in feelings impassioned and warm.
With the warm words of feeling, or dull words of clay;
Thou hast left me a leaf, to be filled with the thought,
The rose- thought of fancy, with dreaminess fraught.
Yet the soul, when it dreams of the warm, absent heart,
Will scarce in the dullness of earth take a part,
But up, soaring upward, through shadow and storm,
Find its home but in feelings impassioned and warm.
Heart answers heart-music; the deep prison-cell
Hath its inmates, for sorrows enough in it dwell;
Yet memory there hath its music, and hears
The loved tones of friends of its earlier years:
Hath its inmates, for sorrows enough in it dwell;
Yet memory there hath its music, and hears
The loved tones of friends of its earlier years:
