Explore "Duty Surviving Self-Love" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THE ONLY SURE FRIEND OF DECLINING LIFE A SOLILOQUY
Unchanged within, to see all changed without, / Is a blank lot and hard to bear, no doubt. / Yet why at others' wanings should'st thou fret? / Then only might'st thou feel a just regret, / Hadst thou withheld thy love or hid thy light / In selfish forethought of neglect and slight. / O wiselier then, from feeble yearnings freed, / _While_, and _on whom_, thou may'st -- shine on! nor heed / Whether the object by reflected light / Return thy radiance or absorb it quite: / And though thou notest from thy safe recess / Old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air, / Love them for what they _are_; nor love them less, / Because to _thee_ they are not what they _were_.