A Confession To A Friend In Trouble

 Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
 Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I even smile old smiles--with listlessness--
 Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.


A thought too strange to house within my brain
 Haunting its outer precincts I discern:
 --That I will not show zeal again to learn
Your griefs, and, sharing them, renew my pain.
.
.
.


It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer
That shapes its lawless figure on the main,
And each new impulse tends to make outflee
The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here;
Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be
Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!

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