By will impell’d, Love o’er my path presides;
    By Pleasure led, o’ercome by Habit’s reign,
    Sweet Hope deludes, and comforts me again;
    At her bright touch, my heart’s despair subsides. 
    It takes her proffer’d hand, and there confides. 
    To doubt its blind disloyal guide were vain;
    Each sense usurps poor Reason’s broken rein;
    On each desire, another wilder rides! 
    Grace, virtue, honour, beauty, words so dear,
    Have twined me with that laurell’d bough, whose power
    My heart hath tangled in its lab’rinth sweet: 
    The thirteen hundred twenty-seventh year,
    The sixth of April’s suns—­in that first hour,
    My entrance mark’d, whence I see no retreat.

    WOLLASTON.

SONNET CLXXVII.

Beato in sogno, e di languir contento.

THOUGH SO LONG LOVE’S FAITHFUL SERVANT, HIS ONLY REWARD HAS BEEN TEARS.

      Happy in visions, and content to pine,
    Shadows to clasp, to chase the summer gale,
    On shoreless and unfathom’d sea to sail,
    To build on sand, and in the air design,
    The sun to gaze on till these eyes of mine
    Abash’d before his noonday splendour fail,
    To chase adown some soft and sloping vale,
    The winged stag with maim’d and heavy kine;
    Weary and blind, save my own harm to all,
    Which day and night I seek with throbbing heart,
    On Love, on Laura, and on Death I call. 
    Thus twenty years of long and cruel smart,
    In tears and sighs I’ve pass’d, because I took
    Under ill stars, alas! both bait and hook.

    MACGREGOR.

SONNET CLXXVIII.

Grazie ch’ a pochi ’l ciel largo destina.

THE ENCHANTMENTS THAT ENTHRALL HIM

      Graces, that liberal Heaven on few bestows;
    Rare excellence, scarce known to human kind;
    With youth’s bright locks age’s ripe judgment join’d;
    Celestial charms, which a meek mortal shows;
    An elegance unmatch’d; and lips, whence flows
    Music that can the sense in fetters bind;
    A goddess step; a lovely ardent mind,
    That breaks the stubborn, and the haughty bows;
    Eyes, whose refulgence petrifies the heart,
    To glooms, to shades that can a light impart,
    Lift high the lover’s soul, or plunge it low;
    Speech link’d by tenderness and dignity;
    With many a sweetly-interrupted sigh;
    Such are the witcheries that transform me so.

    NOTT.

      Graces which liberal Heaven grants few to share: 
    Rare virtue seldom witness’d by mankind;
    Experienced judgment with fair hair combined;
    High heavenly beauty in a humble fair;
    A gracefulness most excellent