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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


SONNET: 2, 28 by FREDERICK GODDARD TUCKERMAN

First Line: YET SOMETIMES, WITH THE SAD RESPECTANT MIND
Last Line: OR THE FAINT RUSTLING OF THE WATCH BENEATH HIS PILLOW.

Yet sometimes, with the sad respectant mind
We look upon lost hours of want and wail
As on a picture, with contentment pale;
And even the present seems with voices kind
To soothe our sorrow; and the past endears;
Or like a sick man's happy trance appears,
When on the first soft waves of slumber's calm
And like a wreck that has outlived the gale,
No longer lifted by the wrenching billow,
He rides at rest; while from the distant dam,
Dim and far off as in a dream, he hears
The pulsing hammer play, or the vague wind
Rising and falling in the wayside willow,
Or the faint rustling of the watch beneath his pillow.



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