Are these wild thoughts, thus fettered in my rhymes, <br />Indeed the product of my heart and brain? <br />How strange that on my ear the rhythmic strain <br />Falls like faint memories of far-off times! <br />When did I feel the sorrow, act the part, <br />Which I have striv'n to shadow forth in song? <br />In what dead century swept that mingled throng <br />Of mighty pains and pleasures through my heart? <br />Not in the yesterdays of that still life <br />Which I have passed so free and far from strife, <br />But somewhere in this weary world I know, <br />In some strange land, beneath some orient clime, <br />I saw or shared a martyrdom sublime, <br />And felt a deeper grief than any later woe.<br /><br />Henry Timrod<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-14-2/
