Poems

Chapter 31: SONNET. A CONTRAST.

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About This Book

This collection gathers lyrical pieces that trace the day's and year's cycles, moving through sunrise, morning, noonday, sunset, moonlight and seasonal scenes. It pairs brief landscape lyrics with sonnets, songs, and occasional narrative ballads, blending vivid natural description—mountains, streams, birds, and coastal views—with meditative reflections on mortality, faith, memory, and poetic ambition. The tone alternates between pastoral celebration and sober contemplation, favoring clear sensory detail, moral sentiment, and accessible stanza forms that foreground feeling and observation over formal experimentation.

SONNET.
A CONTRAST.

The flowers that, unrefreshed with rain or dew,

Pine 'neath the scorching summer's sun away,

Are but the emblems—purer still than they—

Of hearts that ne'er the blight of sorrow knew,

To contrast with their gladness—for the breast

That welcomes joy back to its shrine again,

After a weary interval of pain,

Enjoys the feeling with a warmer zest:

And when at length the dew-drop lingers o'er

The flowers that sickened with its long delay,

How sweetly do they own its former sway,

And bloom again more lovely than before.

Who would not, for a while then, cherish grief,

To taste the bliss, the rapture of relief?