A Wish
When your joys are of the sweetest
And your heart is light and free;
When your griefs are skimming fleetest,
Love, one moment think of me.
I’d not ask you to remember
Me when life is dull and drear;
When your hopes are but an ember
From a cold and vanished year;
Sorrow’s far too bleak a burden
To retain in mem’ry’s hall.
Friendship has no greater guerdon
Than to happiness recall.
So, when roses scent the twilight
Air with ling’ring dew damp breath,
Please remember me as eye-bright
Faith remembers until death.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on January 31, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
“A Wish” originally appeared in Poems of the Four Seas (The Cornhill Publishing Co., 1921).
Joshua Henry Jones Jr.
Joshua Henry Jones Jr. was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He published both prose and poetry, including Poems of the Four Seas (The Cornhill Company, 1921); The Heart of the World (Stratford Co., 1919); and By Sanction of Law (McGrath Publishing Company, 1924). Jones died on December 14, 1955, in Boston.