As long as verse of mine shall steal from tears
Their bitterness, or live to shed a gleam
Of solace over one dejected thought.
In privately printed edition.
Professor Dowden quotes, from “a slip of MS. in the poet’s hand-writing,” the following variation of these lines—
’Tis well, and if the Record in the strength
And earnestness of feeling, overpass’d
Those narrow limits and so miss’d its aim,
Yet will I trust that on the printed page
Received, it there may keep a place unblamed.