More bright than ever, and a lovelier fair,
    Before me she appears,
    Where most she’s conscious that her sight will please
    This is one pillar that sustains my life;
    The other her dear name,
    That to my heart sounds so delightfully. 
    But tracing in my mind,
    That she who form’d my choicest hope is dead
    E’en in her blossom’d prime;
    Thou knowest, Love, full well what I become: 
    She I trust sees it too, who dwells with truth.

    Ye sweet associates, who admired her charms,
    Her life angelical,
    And her demeanour heavenly upon earth
    For me lament, and be by pity wrought
    No wise for her, who, risen
    To so much peace, me has in warfare left;
    Such, that should any shut
    The road to follow her, for some length of time,
    What Love declares to me
    Alone would check my cutting through the tie;
    But in this guise he reasons from within: 

    “The mighty grief transporting thee restrain;
    For passions uncontroll’d
    Forfeit that heaven, to which thy soul aspires,
    Where she is living whom some fancy dead;
    While at her fair remains
    She smiles herself, sighing for thee alone;
    And that her fame, which lives
    In many a clime hymn’d by thy tongue, may ne’er
    Become extinct, she prays;
    But that her name should harmonize thy voice;
    If e’er her eyes were lovely held, and dear.” 
    Fly the calm, green retreat;
    And ne’er approach where song and laughter dwell,
    O strain; but wail be thine! 
    It suits thee ill with the glad throng to stay,
    Thou sorrowing widow wrapp’d in garb of woe.

    NOTT.

SONNET II.

Rotta e l’ alta Colonna, e ’l verde Lauro.

HE BEWAILS HIS DOUBLE LOSS IN THE DEATHS OF LAURA, AND OF COLONNA.

      Fall’n that proud Column, fall’n that Laurel tree,
    Whose shelter once relieved my wearied mind;
    I’m reft of what I ne’er again shall find,
    Though ransack’d every shore and every sea: 
    Double the treasure death has torn from me,
    In which life’s pride was with its pleasure join’d;
    Not eastern gems, nor the world’s wealth combined,
    Can give it back, nor land, nor royalty. 
    But, if so fate decrees, what can I more,
    Than with unceasing tears these eyes bedew,
    Abase my visage, and my lot deplore? 
    Ah, what is life, so lovely to the view! 
    How quickly in one little morn is lost
    What years have won with labour and with cost!

    NOTT.

      My laurell’d hope! and thou, Colonna proud! 
    Your broken strength can shelter me no more! 
    Nor Boreas, Auster, Indus, Afric’s shore,
    Can give me that, whose loss my soul hath bow’d: