| Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891. | | | | To a Friend | | By James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) |
| | Who Gave Me a Group of Weeds and Grasses after a Drawing of Dürer |
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TRUE as the sun’s own work, but more refined, | |
| It tells of love behind the artist’s eye, | |
| Of sweet companionships with earth and sky, | |
| And summers stored, the sunshine of the mind. | |
| What peace! Sure, ere you breathe, the fickle wind | 5 |
| Will break its truce and bend that grass-plume high, | |
| Scarcely yet quiet from the gilded fly | |
| That flits a more luxurious perch to find. | |
| Thanks for a pleasure that can never pall, | |
| A serene moment, deftly caught and kept | 10 |
| To make immortal summer on my wall. | |
| Had he who drew such gladness ever wept? | |
| Ask rather could he else have seen at all, | |
| Or grown in Nature’s mysteries an adept? | | | |
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