| Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891. | | | | Lines to a Friend | | By Louis Dyer (1851–1908) |
| | Who Had Been an Actor in the Greek Play at Harvard College
Sent with Thackeray’s Anthologia Græca |
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A JOYOUS mourner clad in glistening white, | |
| Thee I beheld with suppliant’s olive bough | |
| And bound the fillet on thy youthful brow: | |
| Walking before them, thou didst all delight. | |
| Alas! thy slender youth shone there too bright, | 5 |
| Nor would for Thebes the Gods thy grief allow, | |
| But sorrows of thine own they send thee now | |
| And dim with flowing tears thy peaceful sight. | |
| I bade thee feign that look of Theban woe, | |
| Who, powerless now, would fain forbid this grief; | 10 |
| For in the sober depths of thy pure eyes | |
| I seem to know a look that ever tries— | |
| Feigning an unfelt joy—to gain relief | |
| From pains which stricken souls alone can know. | | | |
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