ts it, Love, old arts to try again?
Their day is pass'd: thy power, since lost the arms
Which were my terror once, no longer harms.
Thy arms were then her eyes, unrivall'd, whence
Live darts were freely shot of viewless flame;
No help from reason came,
For against Heaven avails not man's defence;
Thought, Silence, Feeling, Gaiety, Wit, Sense,
Modest demeanour, affable discourse,
In words of sweetest force
Whence every grosser nature gentle grew,
That angel air, humble to all and kind,
Whose praise, it needs not mine, from all we find;
Stood she, or sat, a grace which often threw
Doubt on the gazer's mind
To which the meed of highest praise was due--
O'er hardest hearts thy victory was sure,
With arms like these, which lost I am secure.
The minds which Heaven abandons to thy reign,
Haply are bound in many times and ways,
But mine one only chain,
Its wisdom shielding me from more, obeys;
Yet freedom brings no joy, though that he burst.
Rather I mournful ask, "Sweet pilgrim mine,
Alas! what doom divine
Me earliest bound to life yet frees thee first:
God, who has snatch'd thee from the world so soon,
Only to kindle our desires, the boon
Of virtue, so complete and lofty, gave
Now, Love, I may deride
Thy future wounds, nor fear to be thy slave;
In vain thy bow is bent, its bolts fall wide,
When closed her brilliant eyes their virtue died.
"Death from thy every law my heart has freed;
She who my lady was is pass'd on high,
Leaving me free to count dull hours drag by,
To solitude and sorrow still decreed."
MACGREGOR.
SONNET III.
_L' ardente nodo ov' io fui, d' ora in ora._
ON THE DEATH OF ANOTHER LADY.
That burning toil, in which I once was caught,
While twice ten years and one I counted o'er,
Death has unloosed: like burden I ne'er bore;
That grief ne'er fatal proves I now am taught.
But Love, who to entangle me still sought,
Spread in the treacherous grass his net once more,
So fed the fire with fuel as before,
That my escape I hardly could have wrought.
And, but that my first woes experience gave,
Snared long since and kindled I had been,
And all the more, as I'm become less green:
My freedom death again has come to save,
And break my bond; that flame now fades, and fails,
'Gainst w
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