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Page:Poems Katharine Elizabeth Howard.djvu/29

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RIVER OF ME
"You waste yourself in various ways;Keep in your strong deep channel," said my friend,"And thus conserve your forces to an end;Search not for honours in the with'ring bays,—The surfeit is the sure reward of praise!"Thus did she tell me how my ways to mend,And how my little streamlets not to send:But I had things to learn in winding ways.
It happened that a brook I had sent outReturned a little farther down my streamTo tell me things that it had been about,—Thus proving true what I had thought a dream.So now I reach them out to search for truth,And thus perpetual I keep my youth.

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