When the swain views the star of day
    Quench in the pillowing waves its ray,
    And scatter darkness o’er the eastern skies
    Rising, his custom’d crook he takes,
    The beech-wood, fountain, plain forsakes,
    As calmly homeward with his flock he hies
    Remote from man, then on his bed
    In cot, or cave, with fresh leaves spread,
    He courts soft slumber, and suspense from care,
    While thou, fell Love, bidst me pursue
    That voice, those footsteps which subdue
    My soul; yet movest not th’ obdurate fair!

    Lock’d in some bay, to taste repose
    On the hard deck, the sailor throws
    His coarse garb o’er him, when the car of light
    Granada, with Marocco leaves,
    The Pillars famed, Iberia’s waves,
    And the world’s hush’d, and all its race, in night. 
    But never will my sorrows cease,
    Successive days their sum increase,
    Though just ten annual suns have mark’d my pain;
    Say, to this bosom’s poignant grief
    Who shall administer relief? 
    Say, who at length shall free me from my chain?

    And, since there’s comfort in the strain,
    I see at eve along each plain. 
    And furrow’d hill, the unyoked team return: 
    Why at that hour will no one stay
    My sighs, or bear my yoke away? 
    Why bathed in tears must I unceasing mourn? 
    Wretch that I was, to fix my sight
    First on that face with such delight,
    Till on my thought its charms were strong imprest,
    Which force shall not efface, nor art,
    Ere from this frame my soul dispart! 
    Nor know I then if passion’s votaries rest.

    O hasty strain, devoid of worth,
    Sad as the bard who brought thee forth,
    Show not thyself, be with the world at strife,
    From nook to nook indulge thy grief;
    While thy lorn parent seeks relief,
    Nursing that amorous flame which feeds his life!

    NOTT.

SONNET XLII.

Poco era ad appressarsi agli occhi miei.

SUCH ARE HIS SUFFERINGS THAT HE ENVIES THE INSENSIBILITY OF MARBLE.

      Had but the light which dazzled them afar
    Drawn but a little nearer to mine eyes,
    Methinks I would have wholly changed my form,
    Even as in Thessaly her form she changed: 
    But if I cannot lose myself in her
    More than I have—­small mercy though it won—­
    I would to-day in aspect thoughtful be,
    Of harder stone than chisel ever wrought,
    Of adamant, or marble cold and white,
    Perchance through terror, or of jasper rare
    And therefore prized by the blind greedy crowd. 
    Then were I free from this hard heavy yoke
    Which makes me envy Atlas, old and worn,
    Who with his shoulders brings Morocco night.

    ANON.