“At thy feet what thou dost see
        The waters of repentance be,
        Which, night and day, I must augment
        With tears, like a true penitent,

        “If haply so my day of grace
        Be not yet past; and this lone place,
        O’er-shadowy, dark, excludeth hence
        All thoughts but grief and penitence.”

"Why dost thou weep, thou gentle maid!  And wherefore in this barren shade Thy hidden thoughts with sorrow feed?  Can thing so fair repentance need?"

        “O!  I have done a deed of shame,
        And tainted is my virgin fame,
        And stain’d the beauteous maiden white,
        In which my bridal robes were dight.”

        “And who the promised spouse, declare: 
        And what those bridal garments were.”

        “Severe and saintly righteousness
        Compos’d the clear white bridal dress;
        JESUS, the son of Heaven’s high king,
        Bought with his blood the marriage ring.

        “A wretched sinful creature, I
        Deem’d lightly of that sacred tie,
        Gave to a treacherous WORLD my heart,
        And play’d the foolish wanton’s part.

        “Soon to these murky shades I came,
        To hide from the sun’s light my shame. 
        And still I haunt this woody dell,
        And bathe me in that healing well,
        Whose waters clear have influence
        From sin’s foul stains the soul to cleanse;
        And, night and day, I them augment
        With tears, like a true penitent,
        Until, due expiation made,
        And fit atonement fully paid,
        The lord and bridegroom me present,
        Where in sweet strains of high consent,
        God’s throne before, the Seraphim
        Shall chaunt the extatic marriage hymn.”

“Now Christ restore thee soon “—­I said,
And thenceforth all my dream was fled.

            POEMS WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1795-98,
                AND NOT REPRINTED BY LAMB

SONNET

(Summer, 1795)

        The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed,
          And ’gins to sprinkle on the earth below
          Those rays that from his shaken locks do flow;
        Meantime, by truant love of rambling led,
        I turn my back on thy detested walls,
          Proud City! and thy sons I leave behind,
          A sordid, selfish, money-getting kind;
        Brute things, who shut their ears when Freedom calls.

        I pass not thee so lightly, well-known spire,
          That minded me of many a pleasure gone,
          Of merrier days, of love and Islington;
        Kindling afresh the flames of past desire. 
          And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on
          To the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire.