Poems (Storrie)/A Thought

by Agnes Louisa Storrie

For works with similar titles, see A Thought.

A Thought

Oh! this is joy to fashion
 With cunning rune and rhyme
A song of love and passion
 That withers not with time;
To miss the critic's stricture
 By poems richly wrought
The line that makes a picture,
 The word that holds a thought.

Not sounds, like beads that follow
 And tinkle as they fall,
While every one is hollow,
 No pearl among them all;
To delve in thought's recesses,
 And find the virgin gold,
And through the mind's fine presses
 A current coinage mould
That, from the brain fresh-minted,
 Shall pass from hand to hand,
And, with truth's seal imprinted,
 Enrich a needy land.

Oh! this is joy to utter,
 Not strange and foreign words,
But the soft sounds that flutter
 The throats of nesting birds,
To aid, by living phrases,
 Tired souls their watch to keep,
Or, 'mid life's harsh amazes,
 Sing one sad heart to sleep.