ous showers, that sullying smear
Thy radiant lilies, towering on the plain;
Bend low, with rivel'd leaves of canker'd stain,
Thy drench'd and heavy rose.--Yet pledg'd and dear
Fair Hope still holds the promise of the Year;
Suspends her anchor on the silver horn
Of the next wexing Orb, tho', JUNE, thy Day,
Robb'd of its golden eve, and rosy morn,
And gloomy as the Winter's rigid sway,
Leads sunless, lingering, disappointing Hours
Thro' the song-silent glades and dropping bowers.

SONNET LXXIII.

TRANSLATION.

He who a tender long-lov'd Wife survives,
Sees himself sunder'd from the only mind
Whose hopes, and fears, and interests, were combin'd,
And blended with his own.--No more she lives!
No more, alas! her death-numb'd ear receives
His thoughts, that trace the Past, or anxious wind
The Future's darkling maze!--His wish refin'd,
The wish to please, exists no more, that gives
The will its energy, the nerves their tone!--
He feels the texture of his quiet torn,
And stopt the settled course that Action drew;
Life stands suspended--motionless--till thrown
By outward causes, into channels new;--
But, in the dread suspense, how sinks the Soul forlorn!

SONNET LXXIV.

[1]In sultry noon when youthful MILTON lay,
Supinely stretch'd beneath the poplar shade,
Lur'd by his Form, a fair Italian Maid
Steals from her loitering chariot, to survey
The slumbering charms, that all her soul betray.
Then, as coy fears th' admiring gaze upbraid,
Starts;--and these lines, with hurried pen pourtray'd,
Slides in his half-clos'd hand;--and speeds away.--
"Ye eyes, ye human stars!--if, thus conceal'd
By Sleep's soft veil, ye agitate my heart,
Ah! what had been its conflict if reveal'd
Your rays had shone!"--Bright Nymph, thy strains impart
Hopes, that impel the graceful Bard to rove,
Seeking thro' Tuscan Vales his visionary Love.

1: This romantic circumstance of our great Poet's juvenility was
inserted, as a well known fact, in one of the General Evening Posts
in the Spring 1789, and it was there supposed to have formed the
first impulse of his Italian journey.

SONNET LXXV.

SUBJECT CONTINUED.

He found her not;--yet much the POET found,
To swell Imagination's golden store,
On Arno's bank, and on that bloomy shore,
Warbling Parthenope; in the wide bound,