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Home  »  The Book of the Sonnet  »  Thomas Doubleday (1790–1870)

Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.

I. The Poet’s Solitude

Thomas Doubleday (1790–1870)

THINK not the Poet’s life—although his cell

Be seldom printed by the stranger’s feet—

Hath not its silent plenitude of sweet:

Look at yon lone and solitary dell;

The stream that loiters ’mid its stones can tell

What flowerets its unnoted waters meet,

What odors o’er its narrow margin fleet;

Ay, and the Poet can repeat as well;—

The foxglove, closing inly, like a shell;

The hyacinth; the rose, of buds the chief;

The thorn, bediamonded with dewy showers;

The thyme’s wild fragrance, and the heather bell;

All, all are there. So vain is the belief

That the sequestered path has fewest flowers.