| James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902. | | | | February 7 | | To Charles Dickens | | By John Forster (1812–1876) |
| | (Born Feb. 7, 1812)
GENIUS and its rewards are briefly told: | |
| 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: | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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. | | | | |
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