SOFT Sensibility! subduing power,
Thy thorns are wounding while I pluck the flower;
Thy influence all unseen, beyond controul,
Rouses each finer feeling of the soul,
Which but for thee, had slept in calm repose,
Nor waked to multiply our keenest woes.
Tho’ from thy source such streams of sorrow flow,
Yet still I love thy sable garb of woe;
And tho’ thy wound our present peace destroys,
Sweet is the balm of thy attendant joys.
Grief’s inlet, sorrow’s presage thou art found;
Keen is thy dart, and frequent is the wound.
Th’ injurious thoughts which from thy shafts arise
Shade our horizoncloud our mental skies.
The look that told them, and the pain they brought
Fatal neglect with tenfold anguish fraught
The cruel glance from friendship’s jealous eye
These all proclaim thy power, sweet Sensibility!
Yet still some flow’rets grace thy lone abode,
Thy voice enlivens poverty’s bleak road,
Thy hand has pluck’d the arrow from her breast,
Lighten’d her burden, bade the suff’rer rest;
Leading thy children to the gloomy cell,
Where poverty and pain and famine dwell;
While all the host of virtues in thy train,
Smile on the scene, and lull the sense of pain.
Thou hast a sweet reward on all bestow’d,
Who feel thy strength supporting misery’s load;
And he who leaves the house of woe, to share
More sumptuous viands, or more costly fare,
Will feed the body, while he starves the mind,
And rob it of its pleasures most refin’d.
Such joys, sweet Sensibility, are thine;
Then be alike thy joys and sorrows mine.
(Elizabeth Bath)
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Based on Topics: Mind Poems, Sadness Poems, Soul Poems, Joy & Excitement Poems, Sense & Perception Poems, Flowers Poems, Pain Poems, Smiling Poems, Art Poems, Power Poems, Grief PoemsBased on Keywords: rets, injurious, inlet, starves, rouses, subduing, viands, sensibility, enlivens