| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XXXIV. Compensation
Sonnet: ‘O blessèd be the tear that sadly rolled’ | | By Robert Roscoe (1789?–1850) |
| | | O BLESSÈD be the tear that sadly rolled | |
| For me, my mother! down thy sacred cheek; | |
| That with a silent fervour did bespeak | |
| A fonder tale than language ever told; | |
| And poured such balm upon my spirit, weak | 5 |
| And wounded, in a world so harsh and cold, | |
| As that wherewith an angel would uphold | |
| Those that astray heaven’s holy guidance seek. | |
| And though it passed away, and, soon as shed, | |
| Seemed ever lost to vanish from thine eye, | 10 |
| Yet only to the dearest store it fled | |
| Of my remembrance, where it now doth lie, | |
| Like a thrice precious relic of the dead, | |
| The chiefest jewel of its treasury. | | | | |
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