SONNET XI.

PALE Roamer through the night! thou poor
Forlorn!

Remorse that man on his death-bed possess,
Who in the credulous hour of tenderness
Betrayed, then cast thee forth to want and scorn!
The world is pitiless: the chaste one's pride
Mimic of Virtue, scowls on thy distress:

Thy Loves and they that envied thee, deride:
And Vice alone will shelter wretchedness!
O! I could weep to think, that there should be
Cold-bosomed lewd ones, who endure to place
Foul offerings on the shrine of misery,
And force from famine the caress of Love;
May He shed healing on thy sore disgrace,
He, the great Comforter that rules above!

SONNET XII.

SWEET Mercy! how my very heart has bled
To see thee, poor Old Man! and thy gray hairs
Hoar with the snowy blast: while no one cares
To clothe thy shrivelled limbs and palsied head.
My Father! throw away this tattered vest
That mocks thy shivering! take my garment-use
A young man's arm! I'll melt these frozen dews
That hang from thy white beard and numb thy
breast.

My Sara too shall tend thee, like a Child :
And thou shall talk, in our fire-side's recess,
Of purple pride, that scowls on wretchedness.
He did not so, the Galilean mild,

Who met the Lazars turned from rich men's doors,
And called them Friends, and healed their noisome

Sores!

SONNET XIII.

TO THE AUTUMNAL MOON.

MILD Splendour of the various-vested Night!
Mother of wildly-working visions! hail!
I watch thy gliding, while with watery light
Thy weak eye glimmers through a fleecy veil;
And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud
Behind the gathered blackness lost on high;
And when thou dartest from the wind-rent cloud
Thy placid lightning o'er the awakened sky.
Ah such is Hope! as changeful and as fair!
Now dimly peering on the wistful sight;
Now hid behind the dragon-winged Despair:
But soon emerging in her radiant might
She o'er the sorrow-clouded breast of Care
Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight.

SONNET XIV.

THOU bleedest, my poor Heart! and thy distress Reasoning I ponder with a scornful smile,

And probe thy sore wound sternly, though the while

Swoln be mine eye and dim with heaviness.
Why didst thou listen to Hope's whisper bland?
Or, listening, why forget the healing tale,
When Jealousy, with feverous fancies pale,
Jarred thy fine fibres with a maniac's hand?
Faint was that Hope, and rayless!—Yet 'twas fair,
And soothed with many a dream the hour of rest:
Thou shouldst have loved it most when most

opprest,

And nursed it with an agony of care,

Even as a Mother her sweet. infant heir

That wan and sickly droops upon her breast!

SONNET XV.

TO THE AUTHOR OF "THE ROBBERS."

SCHILLER! that hour I would have wished to die, If through the shuddering midnight I'had sent From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent That fearful voice, a famished Father's cryLest in some after moment aught more mean Might stamp me mortal! A triumphant shout Black Horror screamed, and all her goblin rout Diminished shrunk from the more withering scene! Ah! Bard tremendous in sublimity!

Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood Wandering at eve with finely frenzied eye Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood! Awhile with mute awe-gazing I would brood : Then weep aloud in a wild ecstasy!

1