Explore "Sappho Redivivus-A Fragment" by Robert Burns on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
By all I lov'd, neglected and forgot, / No friendly face e'er lights my squalid cot; / Shunn'd, hated, wrong'd, unpitied, unredrest, / The mock'd quotation of the scorner's jest! / Ev'n the poor support of my wretched life, / Snatched by the violence of legal strife. / Oft grateful for my very daily bread / To those my family's once large bounty fed; / A welcome inmate at their homely fare, / My griefs, my woes, my sighs, my tears they share: / (Their vulgar souls unlike the souls refin'd, / The fashioned marble of the polished mind).
In vain would Prudence, with decorous sneer, / Point out a censuring world, and bid me fear; / Above the world, on wings of Love, I rise- / I know its worst, and can that worst despise; / Let Prudence' direst bodements on me fall, / M[ontgomer]y, rich reward, o'erpays them all!