Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less

Here, far away, than when I tarried near;

I even smile old smiles—with listlessness—

Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.

A thought too strange to house within my brain

Haunting its outer precincts I discern:

—That I will not show zeal again to learn

Your griefs, and sharing them, renew my pain . . .

It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer

That shapes its lawless figure on the main,

And each new impulse tends to make outflee

The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here;

Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be

Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!

1866.