Sonnet to the pupils of Hindu College?

It is written by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio.

Expanding like the petals of young flowers

I watch the gentle opening of your minds

And the sweet loosening of the spell that binds

Your intellectual energies and powers

That stretch (like young birds in soft summer hours)

Their wings to try their strength. O! how the winds

Of circumstance, and freshening April showers

Of early knowledge, and unnumbered kinds

Of new perceptions shed their influence;

And how you worship truth's omnipotence!

What joyance rains upon me, when I see

Fame in the mirror of futurity,

Weaving the chaplets you have yet to gain,

And then I feel I have not lived in vain.