Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891.

To a Friend

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

TRUE as the sun’s own work, but more refined,

It tells of love behind the artist’s eye,

Of sweet companionships with earth and sky,

And summers stored, the sunshine of the mind.

What peace! Sure, ere you breathe, the fickle wind

Will break its truce and bend that grass-plume high,

Scarcely yet quiet from the gilded fly

That flits a more luxurious perch to find.

Thanks for a pleasure that can never pall,

A serene moment, deftly caught and kept

To make immortal summer on my wall.

Had he who drew such gladness ever wept?

Ask rather could he else have seen at all,

Or grown in Nature’s mysteries an adept?