A Confession To A Friend In Trouble

Read 'A Confession To A Friend In Trouble' by 'Thomas Hardy' and provide your summary and literary analysis in the comments section below.

A Confession To A Friend In Trouble by Thomas Hardy

 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!

Form: Sonnet Comments

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