Sketches

Chapter 31: SONNET.

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About This Book

A youthful collection of lyrical sketches and short poems composed during the author’s college years, blending poetic retellings of scriptural narratives with reflective prose on boyhood, idleness, dreams, dawn and twilight, and moments of private feeling. Many pieces adopt a devotional or contemplative tone, concentrating on nature imagery, familial affection, grief, and moral deliberation. Occasional sonnets, fugitive poems, a college address, and journal fragments intersperse the sketches, producing a varied sequence that foregrounds vivid description, sentimental mood, and earnest introspection rather than sustained narrative development.

SONNET.

I care not that the world, when I am dead,

Remember me; I care not that they come

To see the place where I shall lay my head,

Or praise me with low voices at my tomb;

I would not even a recording stone

Should tell them what I was—when I am gone.

There are a few who love me—whom I love—

Gentle and gifted spirits, who would weep,

But not that I had found a rest above,

And in their hearts my trifling virtues keep;

And one, whom I have folded like a dove

In my affections, would lie down and sleep

Softly beside me—and I should not care,

That any one should know that I was there.