Whoever reads a poet’s rhyme
To find the poet there,
Might equally essay to climb
To castles in the air.
He lives not in reality,
Or rather, lives too much.
He makes a forest of a tree,
A palace of a hutch.
To-day a transient pang appears
His life’s eternal sorrow,
But he is laughing through his tears
And full of joy to-morrow.
For if there’s oft a germ of truth,
The flower is fancy’s own.
’Tis the world’s heart he shows, in sooth,
And his is still unknown.
And sometimes in his happiest days,
Without excuse or cause,
He pens the mournfullest of lays,
To win the world’s applause.
And from the saddest heart, at times,
The merriest stanzas flow.
Friend, think not by the poet’s rhymes
The poet’s heart to know.
TO AN INFANT.
O little one, new born,
I would I were like thee;
Then were this whole world’s scorn
And praise alike to me.
Then would I look on life
As do thine azure eyes,
And know how vain its strife,
How paltry what we prize.