Page:Poems Greenwell.djvu/113

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WITHOUT AND WITHIN.
101
Shoot past, but something o'er my soul a summer feeling sends,
That brings my good old kinsman back, and all my boyhood's friends.

One still is left—the friend that fought my battles out at school;
Now would he fight them with the world, if ever it should cool
To verse of mine—yes, inch by inch contending: not a line
He reads, but takes them all on trust,—content that they are mine.

Now have I made me store of friends, the kindred of my mind;
They give unto me of their wealth, I pay them back in kind:
The world needs music at its feasts, it bids me welcome free;
It loves me for the songs I sing, but these loved my songs for me!

And so to such as these my heart flies back, a thing set free;
It craveth more than doth the mind, less cold equality;
Love is the one true leveller below—he bringeth down,
He raiseth up, he sets on all his chosen brows a crown: