James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
February 7To Charles Dickens
By John Forster (18121876)(Born Feb. 7, 1812)
G
A liberal nature and a niggard doom,
A difficult journey to a splendid tomb.
New-writ, nor lightly weighed, that story old
In gentle Goldsmith’s life I here unfold:
Through other than lone wild or desert-gloom,
In its mere joy and pain, its blight and bloom,
Adventurous. Come with me and behold,
A friend with heart as gentle for distress,
As resolute with fine wise thoughts to bind
The happiest to the unhappiest of our kind,
That there is fiercer crowded misery
In garret-toil and London loneliness
Than in cruel islands ’mid the far-off sea.