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SONNET.

By ev'ry sweet tradition of true hearts,
Graven by Time, in love with his own lore;
By all old martyrdoms and antique smarts,
Wherein Love died to be alive the more;
Yea, by the sad impression on the shore,
Left by the drown'd Leander, to endear

That coast for ever, where the billow's roar
Moaneth for pity in the Poet's ear;

By Hero's faith, and the foreboding tear

That quench'd her brand's last twinkle in its fall;

By Sappho's leap, and the low rustling fear
That sigh'd around her flight; I swear by all,
The world shall find such pattern in my act,
As if Love's great examples still were lack'd.

SONNET

ON RECEIVING A GIFT.

Look how the golden ocean shines above
Its pebbly stones, and magnifies their girth;
So does the bright and blessed light of love
Its own things glorify, and raise their worth.
As weeds seem flowers beneath the flattering brine,
And stones like gems, and gems as gems indeed,
Ev'n so our tokens shine; nay, they outshine
Pebbles and pearls, and gems and coral weed;
For where be ocean waves but half so clear,
So calmly constant, and so kindly warm,
As Love's most mild and glowing atmosphere,
That hath no dregs to be upturn'd by storm?
Thus, sweet, thy gracious gifts are gifts of price,
And more than gold to doting Avarice.

SONNET.

THE curse of Adam, the old curse of all,
Though I inherit in this feverish life

Of worldly toil, vain wishes, and hard strife,
And fruitless thought, in Care's eternal thrall,
Yet more sweet honey than of bitter gall

I taste, through thee, my Eva, my sweet wife.
Then what was Man's lost Paradise! - how rife
Of bliss, since love is with him in his fall!
Such as our own pure passion still might frame,
Of this fair earth, and its delightful bow'rs,
If no fell sorrow, like the serpent, came
To trail its venom o'er the sweetest flow'rs;
But oh! as many and such tears are ours,
As only should be shed for guilt and shame!

SONNET.

LOVE, dearest Lady, such as I would speak,

Lives not within the humour of the

Not being but an outward phantasy,

eye;

That skims the surface of a tinted cheek,

Else it would wane with beauty, and grow weak,

As if the rose made summer, and so lie

Amongst the perishable things that die,

Unlike the love which I would give and seek: Whose health is of no hue to feel decay

With cheeks' decay, that have a rosy prime.
Love is its own great loveliness alway,

And takes new lustre from the touch of time;
Its bough owns no December and no May,
But bears its blossom into Winter's clime.

SONNET.

SILENCE.

THERE is a silence where hath been no sound,

There is a silence where no sound may be,

In the cold grave

under the deep deep sea,

Or in wide desert where no life is found,

Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;

No voice is hush'd no life treads silently,

But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,

That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls

Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls,

And owls, that flit continually between,

Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,

There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.

THE END.

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