to its place,
    Amidst those joys, which few can hope to share;
    What envy of the blest in heaven above,
    With whom she dwells in sympathies divine
    Denied to me on earth, though sought in sighs;
    And oh! what envy of stern Death I prove,
    That with her life has ta’en the light of mine,
    Yet calls me not,—­though fixed and cold those eyes.

    WROTTESLEY.

SONNET XXXIII.

Valle che d’ lamenti miei se’ piena.

ON HIS RETURN TO VAUCLUSE AFTER LAURA’S DEATH.

      Valley, which long hast echoed with my cries;
    Stream, which my flowing tears have often fed;
    Beasts, fluttering birds, and ye who in the bed
    Of Cabrieres’ wave display your speckled dyes;
    Air, hush’d to rest and soften’d by my sighs;
    Dear path, whose mazes lone and sad I tread;
    Hill of delight—­though now delight is fled—­
    To rove whose haunts Love still my foot decoys;
    Well I retain your old unchanging face! 
    Myself how changed! in whom, for joy’s light throng,
    Infinite woes their constant mansion find! 
    Here bloom’d my bliss:  and I your tracks retrace,
    To mark whence upward to her heaven she sprung,
    Leaving her beauteous spoil, her robe of flesh behind!

    WRANGHAM.

      Ye vales, made vocal by my plaintive lay;
    Ye streams, embitter’d with the tears of love;
    Ye tenants of the sweet melodious grove;
    Ye tribes that in the grass fringed streamlet play;
    Ye tepid gales, to which my sighs convey
    A softer warmth; ye flowery plains, that move
    Reflection sad; ye hills, where yet I rove,
    Since Laura there first taught my steps to stray;—­
    You, you are still the same!  How changed, alas,
    Am I! who, from a state of life so blest,
    Am now the gloomy dwelling-place of woe! 
    ’Twas here I saw my love:  here still I trace
    Her parting steps, when she her mortal vest
    Cast to the earth, and left these scenes below.

    ANON.

SONNET XXXIV.

Levommi il mio pensier in parte ov’ era.

SOARING IN IMAGINATION TO HEAVEN, HE MEETS LAURA, AND IS HAPPY.

      Fond fancy raised me to the spot, where strays
    She, whom I seek but find on earth no more: 
    There, fairer still and humbler than before,
    I saw her, in the third heaven’s blessed maze. 
    She took me by the hand, and “Thou shalt trace,
    If hope not errs,” she said, “this happy shore: 
    I, I am she, thy breast with slights who tore,
    And ere its evening closed my day’s brief space. 
    What human heart conceives, my joys exceed;
    Thee only I expect, and (what remain
    Below) the charms, once objects of thy love.” 
    Why ceased she?  Ah! my captive hand why freed? 
    Such of her soft and hallow’d tones the chain,
    From that delightful heaven my soul could scarcely move.