Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO WHOM I WOULD FORGET, by AUGUSTA DAVIES WEBSTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO WHOM I WOULD FORGET, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I wrong mine honour to descend
Last Line: That could not be.
Alternate Author Name(s): Home, Cecil; Webster, Mrs. Julia Augusta
Subject(s): Hate


I WRONG mine honour to descend
To scorn of thee.
It is not thine to comprehend
Aught that has birth or life in me,
And if my spirit will not bend
To stoop beneath the low-arched vault
Wherein thy puny soul is penned,
Not thine the fault.

Not thine the fault thou canst not feel
The pride of truth,
That Self's dull armour clogs with steel
The soaring impulse of thy youth,
And thou, poor slave to thine own weal,
Hast dreamed it blended with deceit,
And offered what thou hast of zeal
At shrine unmeet.

There is a veil before thine eyes
That dims God's light,
And shapes small things in giant guise,
And nothing noble shapes aright,
As, when the night-fog shrouds the skies,
The glimmering lamps that cheer the haze
More glorious to dull gazers rise
Than Heaven's rays.

Thou wast not fashionèd to see
The littleness of Life:
It seemeth a great thing to thee
To soar a conqueror in the strife
Who most the flattered theme shall be
Of empty gossip's babbling page;
And pass their rivals, in degree
Some fancied stage.

Thou wast not fashionèd to know
The majesty of Life,
To feel how this wide world below
With nobleness and strength is rife,
And learn to lift thee from the woe
Of all its marring littleness,
To know each soul hath gifted glow
Some lives to bless.

Go, writhe thy reptile way along,
Go, smile and lie,
And do to nobler hearts some wrong
By might of well-glozed calumny;
But, though thou find among the throng
Some sightless few to trust thy wile,
Know thou shalt never crush the strong
With thy poor guile.

Go, twine thou on thy serpent way,
In that mock sun
That glitters a dim fireless ray,
And thy poor cheated faith has won
To make it monarch of thy day;
But dread, it haply disappears,
And thou art left to grope thy way
Long sunless years.

Pass on, I somewhat soil my mind
In thy contempt,
Yet were I scornless I were blind,
And I am bitterer that I dreamed
Some hidden spark in thee to find
That might awake to truth and good,
And that my hopes spake as the wind,
Not understood.

Go, and such happiness attend
As thou canst know:
No envying ear my thought shall lend
To learn how whirrs thy fortune's wheel:
Be glad, but never seek to blend
One thread of life with mine; for me,
I pray thee never call me friend--
That could not be.







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