SONNET XLI.

29th Sept. 1807.

LET those to whom Love ne'er his raptures

dealt

Despise his power;-dead to the thrilling

sense,

The dear infatuating influence,

With which the stricken breast is doomed to

melt.

Let those not talk of love, who have not knelt In supplicating anguish so intense

That Grief could not conceive a recompense In all the stores of life for what it felt.

If thou hast suffer'd thus, thy God implore To teach thy thought devotion's ardent aim; For all thy days of happiness are o'er

If thou confidest in an earthly flame.

Heaven grant the infinite of thought may find Him who alone can fill the heights and depths of mind.

SONNET XLII.

Written 29th Sept. 1807.

THOU speakest well! Imagination owes
All to herself. To trifles light and vain
She gives amazing stress of joy and pain;
And sometimes, mighty in her own repose,
Removeth mountains, that impending rose

To check her onward path! Creation's reign,
Touched by her magic wand, brings forth a

train

Of playful sprites, or ghosts foreboding woes;
A world to all, save him that sees, unknown!
In summer's blissful noon strange voices swell;
In night's deep silence, whence that bursting

groan?

These, and a thousand shapes, and sounds that dwell

With Fancy, are exclusively their own, Loved by the Priestess of the Magic Cell.

SONNET XLIII.

Inserted in a Novel, written by the Author, printed, but not published, called " Isabel."

1st Oct. 1807.

IF, as the mystics say, grace from above
More frequent dawns while tears of anguish roll,
Wrestling with passions of the fallen soul,
There might be consolation thus to prove
An inward torment; thus, like Noah's dove,
To know no resting-place from grief's control;
No sheltered spot where memory doth not toll
The knell of sorrow for some severed love.
But if an idle anguish desecrate

From every pure and intellectual aim,
The abode of thought, the temple of the
mind,..

What but despair and blasphemy await?—
Religion, come, in Patience' holy name,
The self-abandon'd heart thou'rt pledged to
bind.*

* He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

SONNET XLIV.

Two Sketches attempted, which will only be understood well by him who acknowledges their likeness to himself.

1st Oct. 1807.

HARD is his lot, who wheresoe'er he turns,

No fellow-feeling finds! whom social glee Never exhilarates; whose heart ne'er burns With infant loves ;-nor tears of sympathy, Nor playful smiles,-to other men as free As air or light of heaven-are his; who yearns With impotent, and pining jealousy,

As other men appear to seem and be,

While mockery's withering grin the novice spurns;

And sleek prosperity's unthinking sneer Dashes the trembling effort ere matur'd :

:

Shrinks the chill'd baffled heart, as if the fear

Of unforgiven guilt, and unabjur'd

Pursued ;-for self-applause,* with healthful

cheer,

Ne'er comes where mental misery is endured.

* Madame de Staël says somewhere, "Les grands maux portent leur trouble jusques dans la conscience."

SONNET XLV.

1st Oct. 1807.

SEE this worn wretch amid the giddy throng,
Feeble and timid: watch his anxious look:
That mystery of care the world mistook
For senselessness!-Now bursts the festive song!
Pressed in his memory by a cruel wrong,

And blasting misery of mind which shook The powers of life, so that he cannot brook The trophies that to social mirth belong.

If thou hast never breath'd, though blest with

ease

And intellect, the unavailing prayer,

The idle longing, to surrender these, And other rare pretensions, so thy share

In nature's common stores, and powers to please, Were once allowed,-thou knowest not despair.