| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | III. “Are these wild thoughts thus fettered in my rhymes” | | By Henry Timrod (1828–1867) |
| | | ARE these wild thoughts thus fettered in my rhymes | |
| Indeed the product of my heart and brain? | |
| How strange that on my ear the rhythmic strain | |
| Falls like faint memories of far-off times! | |
| When did I feel the sorrow, act the part | 5 |
| Which I have striven to shadow forth in song? | |
| In what dead century swept that mingled throng | |
| Of mighty pains and pleasures through my heart? | |
| Not in the yesterdays of that still life | |
| Which I have passed so free and far from strife, | 10 |
| But somewhere in this weary world I know, | |
| In some strange land, beneath some Orient clime, | |
| I saw, or shared a martyrdom sublime, | |
| And felt a deeper grief than any later woe. | | | | |
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