Fortune's Wound
—The Privilege of Ruin—
My friend, write not of grief because thy pen
Can counterfeit the thunder of the slain;
Nor gild thy page with borrowed wounds, when
Thou hast not heard thy triumph fracture pain.
What knowest thou of winter, if thy hearth
Has never failed at midnight?—of the door
That shuts upon the hand that gave it worth,
The coinless dawn, the name that is no more?
Thy loves have passed like comets through thy bed,
Thy laurels climb where lesser spirits bow;
Yet there are alphabets the crowned have read
Only as maps of countries unknown now.
For verse begins where fortune loses claim:
The wound looks up—and learns thy tongue by name.
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