Live stream: Duty Surviving Self-Love by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

On Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1pm you can  join us on Facebook live for your bi-weekly dose of literature read aloud. We'll be looking at poems and texts that inspire us, reading along together and offering the chance for people to share their thoughts and get involved in discussions. If you'd like your lunch time to involve some literature, sit back and enjoy.

Duty Surviving Self-Love

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.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)