Dedication: To Tracy

If you would find a moral in these lines,
Look not, dear Tracy! on the words alone:
On all the hopes and fears – symbols and signs –
Virtues and vices – musings half-unknown: –
(Even at best, shallow and rudely done
Yester-ideas); look not! though they be bare
Of worth, the faults are thick as summer-flies:
Unless your softer-than-Midas touch of care
Turn them to gold – your fair look make them fair,
Reflecting them in softly-glancing eyes, –
(As the butterfly sheds loveliness abroad –
Comes on a thistle which were grey and bowed,
Yet is made lovely by its being there).

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