SONNETS. T I. O one who has been long in city pent, And gentle tale of love and languishment? Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye That falls through the clear ether silently. i II. THE HUMAN SEASONS. OUR Seasons fill the measure of the year; Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. III. WRITTEN BEFORE RE-READING KING LEAR. O GOLDEN-TONGUED Romance with Fair plumed Syren! Queen! if far away! 影 Betwixt Hell torment and impassion'd clay Begetters of our deep eternal theme, But when I am consumed with the Fire, Jan. 1818. IV. FROM RONSARD. FRAGMENT OF A SONNET. ATURE withheld Cassandra in the skies For more adornment, a full thousand years; She took their cream of Beauty, fairest dies, And shaped and tinted her above all peers: Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings, And underneath their shadow fill'd her eyes With such a richness that the cloudy Kings Of high Olympus utter'd slavish sighs. When from the Heavens I saw her first descend, My heart took fire, and only burning painsThey were my pleasures-they my Life's sad end; Love pour'd her beauty into my warm veins. V. ANSWER TO A SONNET BY J. H. B "Dark eyes are dearer far Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell." LUE! 'Tis the life of heaven,- the domain And all its vassal streams: pools numberless Married to green in all the sweetest flowers— Forget-me-not, the blue-bell,-and, that queen Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great, When in an Eye thou art alive with fate! Feb. 1818. S VI. TO HOMER. TANDING aloof in giant ignorance, As one who sits ashore and longs perchance So thou wast blind!—but then the veil was rent; |