The graceful tree I loved so long and well,
    Ere its fair boughs in scorn my flame declined,
    Beneath its shade encouraged my poor mind
    To bud and bloom, and ’mid its sorrow swell. 
    But now, my heart secure from such a spell,
    Alas, from friendly it has grown unkind! 
    My thoughts entirely to one end confined,
    Their painful sufferings how I still may tell. 
    What should he say, the sighing slave of love,
    To whom my later rhymes gave hope of bliss,
    Who for that laurel has lost all—­but this? 
    May poet never pluck thee more, nor Jove
    Exempt; but may the sun still hold in hate
    On each green leaf till blight and blackness wait.

    MACGREGOR.

SONNET XLVII.

Benedetto sia ’l giorno e ‘l mese e l’ anno.

HE BLESSES ALL THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF HIS PASSION.

      Blest be the day, and blest the month, the year,
    The spring, the hour, the very moment blest,
    The lovely scene, the spot, where first oppress’d
    I sunk, of two bright eyes the prisoner: 
    And blest the first soft pang, to me most dear,
    Which thrill’d my heart, when Love became its guest;
    And blest the bow, the shafts which pierced my breast,
    And even the wounds, which bosom’d thence I bear. 
    Blest too the strains which, pour’d through glade and grove,
    Have made the woodlands echo with her name;
    The sighs, the tears, the languishment, the love: 
    And blest those sonnets, sources of my fame;
    And blest that thought—­Oh! never to remove! 
    Which turns to her alone, from her alone which came.

    WRANGHAM.

      Blest be the year, the month, the hour, the day,
    The season and the time, and point of space,
    And blest the beauteous country and the place
    Where first of two bright eyes I felt the sway: 
    Blest the sweet pain of which I was the prey,
    When newly doom’d Love’s sovereign law to embrace,
    And blest the bow and shaft to which I trace,
    The wound that to my inmost heart found way: 
    Blest be the ceaseless accents of my tongue,
    Unwearied breathing my loved lady’s name: 
    Blest my fond wishes, sighs, and tears, and pains: 
    Blest be the lays in which her praise I sung,
    That on all sides acquired to her fair fame,
    And blest my thoughts! for o’er them all she reigns.

    DACRE.

SONNET XLVIII.

Padre del ciel, dopo i perduti giorni.

CONSCIOUS OF HIS FOLLY, HE PRAYS GOD TO TURN HIM TO A BETTER LIFE.