English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 399. To a Distant Friend |
| | | William Wordsworth (1770–1850) |
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| WHY art thou silent? Is thy love a plant | |
| Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air | |
| Of absence withers what was once so fair? | |
| Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant? | |
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| Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant, | 5 |
| Bound to thy service with unceasing care— | |
| The mind’s least generous wish a mendicant | |
| For nought but what thy happiness could spare. | |
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| Speak!—though this soft warm heart, once free to hold | |
| A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine, | 10 |
| Be left more desolate, more dreary cold | |
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| Than a forsaken bird’s-nest fill’d with snow | |
| ’Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine— | |
| Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know! | |
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