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DEDICATION.
- FRIEND of old days, of suffering, storm, and strife,
- Patient and kind through many a wild appeal;
- In the arena of thy brilliant life
- Never too busy or too cold to feel:
- Companion from whose ever teeming store
- Of thought and knowledge, happy memory brings
- So much of social wit and sage’s lore,
- Garnered and gleaned by me as precious things:
- Kinsman of him whose very name soon grew
- Unreal as music heard in pleasant dreams,
- So vain the hope my girlish fancy drew,
- So faint and far his vanished presence seems.
- To thee I dedicate this record brief
- Of foreign scenes and deeds too little known;
- This tale of noble souls who conquered grief
- By dint of tending sufferings not their own.
- Thou hast known all my life: its pleasant hours,
- (How many of them have I owed to thee!)
- Its exercise of intellectual powers,
- With thoughts of fame and gladness not to be.
- Thou knowest how Death for ever dogged my way,
- And how of those I loved the best, and those
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- Who loved and pitied me in life’s young day,
- Narrow, and narrower still, the circle grows.
- Thou knowest—for thou hast proved—the dreary shade
- A first‐born’s loss casts over lonely days;
- And gone is now the pale fond smile, that made
- In my dim future, yet, a path of rays.
- Gone, the dear comfort of a voice whose sound
- Came like a beacon‐bell, heard clear above
- The whirl of violent waters surging round;
- Speaking to shipwrecked ears of help and love.
- The joy that budded on my own youth’s bloom,
- When life wore still a glory and a gloss,
- Is hidden from me in the silent tomb;
- Smiting with premature unnatural loss,
- So that my very soul is wrung with pain,
- Meeting old friends whom most I love to see.
- Where are the younger lives, since these remain?
- I weep the eyes that should have wept for me!
- But all the more I cling to those who speak
- Like thee, in tones unaltered by my change;
- Greeting my saddened glance, and faded cheek,
- With the same welcome that seemed sweet and strange
- In early days: when I, of gifts made proud,
- That could the notice of such men beguile,
- Stood listening to thee in some brilliant crowd,
- With the warm triumph of a youthful smile.
- Oh! little now remains of all that was!
- Even for this gift of linking measured words,
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- My heart oft questions, with discouraged pause,
- Does music linger in the slackening chords?
- Yet, friend, I feel not that all power is fled,
- While offering to thee, for the kindly years,
- The intangible gift of thought, whose silver thread
- Heaven keeps untarnished by our bitterest tears.
- So, in the brooding calm that follows woe,
- This tale of LA GARAYE I fain would tell,—
- As, when some earthly storm hath ceased to blow,
- And the huge mounting sea hath ceased to swell;
- After the maddening wrecking and the roar,
- The wild high dash, the moaning sad retreat,
- Some cold slow wave creeps faintly to the shore,
- And leaves a white shell at the gazer’s feet.
- Take, then, the poor gift in thy faithful hand;
- Measure its worth not merely by my own,
- But hold it dear as gathered from the sand
- Where so much wreck of youth and hope lies strown.
- So, if in years to come my words abide—
- Words of the dead to stir some living brain—
- When thoughtful readers lay my book aside,
- Musing on all it tells of joy and pain,
- Towards thee, good heart, towards thee their thoughts shall roam,
- Whose unforsaking faith time hath not riven;
- And to their minds this just award shall come,
- ’Twas a TRUE friend to whom such thanks were given!
