Explore "Only a Simple Rhyme" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Only a simple rhyme of love and sorrow, / Where "blisses" rhymed with "kisses," "heart," with "dart: " / Yet, reading it, new strength I seemed to borrow, / To live on bravely and to do my part.
A little rhyme about a heart that's bleeding -- / Of lonely hours and sorrow's unrelief: / I smiled at first; but there came with the reading / A sense of sweet companionship in grief.
The selfishness of my own woe forsaking, / I thought about the singer of that song. / Some other breast felt this same weary aching; / Another found the summer days too long.
The few sad lines, my sorrow so expressing, / I read, and on the singer, all unknown, / I breathed a fervent though a silent blessing, / And seemed to clasp his hand within my own.
And though fame pass him and he never know it, / And though he never sings another strain, / He has performed the mission of the poet, / In helping some sad heart to bear its pain.