She now replies, and now doth mute appear,
    Like one whose tottering mind regains its power;
    I speak my heart:  “Thou must this cheat resign;
    The thirteen hundred, eight and fortieth year,
    The sixth of April’s suns, his first bright hour,
    Thou know’st that soul celestial fled its shrine!”

    WOLLASTON.

SONNET LXIV.

Questo nostro caduco e fragil bene.

NATURE DISPLAYED IN HER EVERY CHARM, BUT SOON WITHDREW HER FROM SIGHT.

      This gift of beauty which a good men name,
    Frail, fleeting, fancied, false, a wind, a shade,
    Ne’er yet with all its spells one fair array’d,
    Save in this age when for my cost it came. 
    Not such is Nature’s duty, nor her aim,
    One to enrich if others poor are made,
    But now on one is all her wealth display’d,
    —­Ladies, your pardon let my boldness claim. 
    Like loveliness ne’er lived, or old or new,
    Nor ever shall, I ween, but hid so strange,
    Scarce did our erring world its marvel view,
    So soon it fled; thus too my soul must change
    The little light vouchsafed me from the skies
    Only for pleasure of her sainted eyes.

    MACGREGOR.

SONNET LXV.

O tempo, o ciel volubil che fuggendo.

HE NO LONGER CONTEMPLATES THE MORTAL, BUT THE IMMORTAL BEAUTIES OF LAURA.

      O Time!  O heavens! whose flying changes frame
    Errors and snares for mortals poor and blind;
    O days more swift than arrows or the wind,
    Experienced now, I know your treacherous aim. 
    You I excuse, myself alone I blame,
    For Nature for your flight who wings design’d
    To me gave eyes which still I have inclined
    To mine own ill, whence follow grief and shame. 
    An hour will come, haply e’en now is pass’d,
    Their sight to turn on my diviner part
    And so this infinite anguish end at last. 
    Rejects not your long yoke, O Love, my heart,
    But its own ill by study, sufferings vast: 
    Virtue is not of chance, but painful art.

    MACGREGOR.

      O Time!  O circling heavens! in your flight
    Us mortals ye deceive—­so poor and blind;
    O days! more fleeting than the shaft or wind,
    Experience brings your treachery to my sight! 
    But mine the error—­ye yourselves are right;
    Your flight fulfils but that your wings design’d: 
    My eyes were Nature’s gift, yet ne’er could find
    But one blest light—­and hence their present blight. 
    It now is time (perchance the hour is pass’d)
    That they a safer dwelling should select,
    And thus repose might soothe my grief acute: 
    Love’s yoke the spirit may not from it cast,
    (With oh what pain!) it may its ill eject;
    But virtue is attain’d but by pursuit!