Oscar Fay Adams (1855-1919)
"The author of Postlaureate Idylls, Through
the Year with the Poets
, etc., is a native of Worcester, Mass. He resides in Cambridge, and
does general literary work. (D. Lothrop & Co.)" (Crandall)
From Post-Laureate Idyls (1886)
Indifference
What is indifference, do you ask of me?
O well I know the meaning of the phrase.
It is to find grey ash instead of blaze
That warmed you once; to lose, alas! the key
Which turned in friendship's wards; to sometime see
The eyes that shone for you in other days
Now coldly meet your own in passing gaze;
To know that what has been no more shall be.
It is to find that you in naught believe,
To know that youth has fled far down the past,
To feel that hope will ne'er again be born,
And love is but a poor worn cheat at last.
It is all this, yet not for this to grieve,--
To live and heed not that one lives forlorn!
(Text from American Sonnets)
Renunciation
Nay, friend, farewell! for if I loved you
less,
It might be I should strive to hold you
fast
In bonds of friendship you had long
o'erpast,
And play the tyrant where I hoped to
bless.
Yet, since my love still pleads, I fain would
press
Once more your hand e'en while I seem to
cast
It coldly from me with these words at
last,--
I may not keep and you may not possess!
Sweet friend, believe me, it is better so,--
To part while love finds yet no cause for grief
In slowly-waning faith, lest haply you
Should one day find some flaw in me you knew
Not of, and I through tears should watch you go,
Knowing your soul in mine had lost belief.
(Text from Representative Sonnets by American Poets)
