First the soft Bagpipe moum’d with zealous haste,
The Stranger next with head on bosom bent
Sigh’d; rueful again the piteous Bagpipe went,
Again the Stranger sighings fresh did waste.
O Bagpipe thou didst steal my heart away -
O Stranger thou my nerves from Pipe didst charm -
O Bagpipe thou didst reassert thy sway -
Again thou Stranger gav’st me fresh alarm -
Alas! I could not choose. Ah! my poor heart.
Mum chance art thou with both oblig’d to part.
Sonnet: Oh! how I love, on a fair summer’s eve
Oh! how I love, on a fair summer’s eve,
When streams of light pour down the golden west,
And on the balmy zephyrs tranquil rest
The silver clouds, far – far away to leave
All meaner thoughts, and take a sweet reprieve
From little cares; to find, with easy quest,
A fragrant wild, with Nature’s beauty drest,
And there into delight my soul deceive.
There warm my breast with patriotic lore,
Musing on Milton’s fate – on Sydney’s bier -
Till their stern forms before my mind arise:
Perhaps on wing of Poesy upsoar,
Full often dropping a delicious tear,
When some melodious sorrow spells mine eyes.
Sonnet to Byron
Byron! how sweetly sad thy melody!
Attuning still the soul to tenderness,
As if soft Pity, with unusual stress,
Had touch’d her plaintive lute, and thou, being by,
Hadst caught the tones, nor suffer’d them to die.
O’ershadowing sorrow doth not make thee less
Delightful: thou thy griefs dost dress
With a bright halo, shining beamily,
As when a cloud the golden moon doth veil,
Its sides are ting’d with a resplendent glow,
Through the dark robe oft amber rays prevail,
And like fair veins in sable marble flow;
Still warble, dying swan! still tell the tale,
The enchanting tale, the tale of pleasing woe.
Sonnet to Spenser
Spenser! a jealous honourer of thine,
A forester deep in thy midmost trees,
Did last eve ask my promise to refine
Some English that might strive thine ear to please.
But Elfin Poet ’tis impossible
For an inhabitant of wintry earth
To rise like Phoebus with a golden quell
Firewing’d and make a morning in his mirth.
It is impossible to escape from toil
O’ the sudden and receive thy spiriting:
The flower must drink the nature of the soil
Before it can put forth its blossoming:
Be with me in the summer days and I
Will for thine honour and his pleasure try.
Sonnet: As from the darkening gloom a silver dove
As from the darkening gloom a silver dove
Upsoars, and darts into the eastern light,
On pinions that naught moves but pure delight,
So fled thy soul into the realms above,
Regions of peace and everlasting love;
Where happy spirits, crown’d with circlets bright
Of starry beam, and gloriously bedight,
Taste the high joy none but the blest can prove.
There thou or joinest the immortal quire
In melodies that even heaven fair
Fill with superior bliss, or, at desire
Of the omnipotent Father, cleavest the air
On holy message sent – What pleasures higher?
Wherefore does any grief our joy impair?
Sonnet on the Sea
It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often ’tis in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be mov’d for days from where it sometime fell,
When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
Oh ye! who have your eyeballs vex’d and tir’d,
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;
Oh ye! whose ears are dinn’d with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody -
Sit ye near some old cavern’s mouth, and brood
Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quir’d!
Sonnet to Fanny
I cry your mercy – pity – love! – aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalises not,
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmask’d, and being seen – without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole, – all – all – be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss, – those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast, -
Yourself – your soul – in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom’s atom or I die,
Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life’s purposes, – the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!
Sonnet to Ailsa Rock
Hearken, thou craggy ocean pyramid!
Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowls’ screams!
When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams?
When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead hid?
How long is’t since the mighty power bid
Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams?
Sleep in the lap of thunder or sunbeams,
Or when grey clouds are thy cold coverlid.
Thou answer’st not; for thou art dead asleep;
Thy life is but two dead eternities -
The