Poems (Storrie)/A Thought
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.