1. I love a friend impartial in his growth
Who tempers intent and is stern with excuse

2. I care not for one who spoils my solitude
Stealing my pleasures and spending my life

3. I have privacies I would not sell their least
For what my palms have held of abundant wealth

4. I lodge in them in a world of my imagining
Where my reason converses and my thoughts delight

5. And the wine of my meanings gives me a drunkenness
I love when my happiness makes my rapture endure

6. When the making of verse has taxed my talent overmuch
I put rhymes aside and relax into prose

7. And make my words moulds for meanings
So I sculpt from rock and draw from sea