Thoughts on my Sickbed

And has the remnant of my life
Been pilfered of this sunny spring?
And have its own prelusive sounds
Touched in my heart no echoing string?

Ah, say not so! The hidden life,
Couchant within this feeble frame,
Hath been enriched by kindred gifts
That undesired, unsought-for, came

With joyful heart in youthful days,
When fresh each season in its round
I welcomed the earliest celandine
Glittering upon the mossy ground.

With busy eyes I pierced the lane
In quest of known and unknown things;
The primrose a lamp on its fortress rock,
The silent butterfly spreading its wings,

The violet betrayed by its noiseless breath,
The daffodil dancing in the breeze,
The carolling thrush on his naked perch,
Towering above the budding trees.

Our cottage-hearth no longer our home,
Companions of nature were we;
The stirring, the still, the loquacious, the mute -
To all we gave our sympathy.

Yet never in those careless days
When springtime in rock, field, or bower
Was but a fountain of earthly hope
A promise of fruits and the splendid flower -

No! - then I never felt a bliss
That might with that compare,
Which, piercing to my couch of rest,
Came to the vernal air.

When loving friends an offering brought,
The first flowers of the year,
Culled from the precincts of our home,
From nooks to memory dear,

With some sad thoughts the work was done,
Unprompted and unbidden,
But joy it brought to my hidden life,
To consciousness no longer hidden.

I felt a power unfelt before,
Controlling weakness, languor, pain;
It bore me to the terrace-walk,
I trod the hills again.

No prisoner in this lonely room,
Isaw the green banks of the Wye
Recalling thy prophetic words -
Bard, brother, friend from infancy!

No need of motion or of strength
Or even breathing air,
I thought of nature's loveliest scenes,
And with memory I was there.

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