1   No specious splendour of this stone      Endears it to my memory ever;   With lustre only once it shone,      And blushes modest as the giver. 2   Some, who can sneer at friendship’s ties,      Have, for my weakness, oft reprov’d me;   Yet still the simple gift I prize,—      For I am sure the giver lov’d me. 3   He offer’d it with downcast look,      As fearful that I might refuse it;   I told him when the gift I took,      My only fear should be to lose it. 4   This pledge attentively I view’d,      And sparkling as I held it near,   Methought one drop the stone bedew’d,      And ever since I’ve lovd a tear. 5   Still, to adorn his humble youth,      Nor wealth nor birth their treasures yield;   But he who seeks the flowers of truth,      Must quit the garden for the field. 6   ’Tis not the plant uprear’d in sloth,      Which beauty shows, and sheds perfume;   The flowers which yield the most of both      In Nature’s wild luxuriance bloom. 7   Had Fortune aided Nature’s care,      For once forgetting to be blind,   His would have been an ample share,      If well proportion’d to his mind. 8   But had the Goddess clearly seen,      His form had fix’d her fickle breast;   Her countless hoards would his have been,      And none remain’d to give the rest.