Sonnet XI

SONNET XI.
 
Se lamentar augelli, o Verdi fronde.
 
SHE IS EVER PRESENT TO HIM.
 
 
If the lorn bird complain, or rustling sweepSoft summer airs o'er foliage waving slow,Or the hoarse brook come murmuring down the steep,Where on the enamell'd bank I sit belowWith thoughts of love that bid my numbers flow;'Tis then I see her, though in earth she sleep!Her, form'd in heaven! I see, and hear, and know!Responsive sighing, weeping as I weep:"Alas," she pitying says, "ere yet the hour,Why hurry life away with swifter flight?Why from thy eyes this flood of sorrow pour?No longer mourn my fate! through death my daysBecome eternal! to eternal lightThese eyes, which seem'd in darkness closed, I raise!"
 
Dacre. 
 
[Pg 244] Where the green leaves exclude the summer beam,And softly bend as balmy breezes blow,And where with liquid lapse the lucid streamAcross the fretted rock is heard to flow,Pensive I lay: when she whom earth concealsAs if still living to my eye appears;And pitying Heaven her angel form revealsTo say, "Unhappy Petrarch, dry your tears.Ah! why, sad lover, thus before your timeIn grief and sadness should your life decay,And, like a blighted flower, your manly primeIn vain and hopeless sorrow fade away?Ah! yield not thus to culpable despair;But raise thine eyes to heaven and think I wait thee there!"
 
Charlotte Smith. 
 
Moved by the summer wind when all is still,The light leaves quiver on the yielding spray;Sighs from its flowery bank the lucid rill,While the birds answer in their sweetest lay.Vain to this sickening heart these scenes appear:No form but hers can meet my tearful eyes;In every passing gale her voice I hear;It seems to tell me, "I have heard thy sighs.But why," she cries, "in manhood's towering prime,In grief's dark mist thy days, inglorious, hide?Ah! dost thou murmur, that my span of timeHas join'd eternity's unchanging tide?Yes, though I seem'd to shut mine eyes in night,They only closed to wake in everlasting light!"
 
Anne Bannerman.

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