Unrecognized

Unrecognized

I am content,

Unrecognized by all the world, to wait,
And do, with uncomplaining lips, my stent

Of human fate.

I am content

To breast alone Fate's overwhelming sea,
Feeling that every other tie is blent

In mind to Thee.

What though my heart

Seeks vainly for some answering tone?
It can but better learn to bear the smart—

To live alone.

It may be sad

To find one's self thus severed from our kind!
But prayer does much to make the true heart glad

Calm and resigned.

To find friends prove

False to the ties of well-remembered days;
To feel the vanity of earthly love,

And human praise;

To stand alone,

And have men deem us worse than we have been;
To feel our highest impulses unknown,

The best unknown;

To feel the ties,

Which through the blood of kindred always run,
As each new shaft unto our bosom flies,

Break one by one—

These are the things

Which try the true heart more than all beside,
And almost make the faith to which it clings

Sink in the tide.

I do not pine,

For at the hallowed hour or rest I kneel,
And in my isolation every grief of mine

To Him reveal.

Through weary days

To do, with patient toil, my every task,
Nor ever think [?] or think of human praise—

Is all I ask.

Without a sigh

I'll stand and meet my fate as best I can;
Feeling—to bravly face one's destiny,

Becomes the man.

Unattributed

1:12, p. 4

10.7.1859