Food wherewithal my lord is well supplied,
    With tears and grief my weary heart I’ve fed;
    As fears within and paleness o’er me spread,
    Oft thinking on its fatal wound and wide: 
    But in her time with whom no other vied,
    Equal or second, to my suffering bed
    Comes she to look on whom I almost dread,
    And takes her seat in pity by my side. 
    With that fair hand, so long desired in vain,
    She check’d my tears, while at her accents crept
    A sweetness to my soul, intense, divine. 
    “Is this thy wisdom, to parade thy pain? 
    No longer weep! hast thou not amply wept? 
    Would that such life were thine as death is mine!”

    MACGREGOR.

      With grief and tears (my soul’s proud sovereign’s food)
    I ever nourish still my aching heart;
    I feel my blanching cheek, and oft I start
    As on Love’s sharp engraven wound I brood. 
    But she, who e’er on earth unrivall’d stood,
    Flits o’er my couch, when prostrate by his dart
    I lie; and there her presence doth impart. 
    Whilst scarce my eyes dare meet their vision’d good,
    With that fair hand in life I so desired,
    She stays my eyes’ sad tide; her voice’s tone
    Awakes the balm earth ne’er to man can give: 
    And thus she speaks:—­“Oh! vain hath wisdom fired
    The hopeless mourner’s breast; no more bemoan,
    I am not dead—­would thou like me couldst live!”

    WOLLASTON.

SONNET LXXII.

Ripensando a quel ch’ oggi il ciel onora.

HE WOULD DIE OF GRIEF WERE SHE NOT SOMETIMES TO CONSOLE HIM BY HER PRESENCE.

      To that soft look which now adorns the skies,
    The graceful bending of the radiant head,
    The face, the sweet angelic accents fled,
    That soothed me once, but now awake my sighs
    Oh! when to these imagination flies,
    I wonder that I am not long since dead! 
    ’Tis she supports me, for her heavenly tread
    Is round my couch when morning visions rise! 
    In every attitude how holy, chaste! 
    How tenderly she seems to hear the tale
    Of my long woes, and their relief to seek! 
    But when day breaks she then appears in haste
    The well-known heavenward path again to scale,
    With moisten’d eye, and soft expressive cheek!

    MOREHEAD.

      ’Tis sweet, though sad, my trembling thoughts to raise,
    As memory dwells upon that form so dear,
    And think that now e’en angels join to praise
    The gentle virtues that adorn’d her here;
    That face, that look, in fancy to behold—­
    To hear that voice that did with music vie—­
    The bending head, crown’d with its locks of gold—­
    All, all that charm’d, now but sad thoughts supply. 
    How had I lived her bitter