A thousand times, sweet warrior, to obtain
    Peace with those beauteous eyes I’ve vainly tried,
    Proffering my heart; but with that lofty pride
    To bend your looks so lowly you refrain: 
    Expects a stranger fair that heart to gain,
    In frail, fallacious hopes will she confide: 
    It never more to me can be allied;
    Since what you scorn, dear lady, I disdain. 
    In its sad exile if no aid you lend
    Banish’d by me; and it can neither stay
    Alone, nor yet another’s call obey;
    Its vital course must hasten to its end: 
    Ah me, how guilty then we both should prove,
    But guilty you the most, for you it most doth love.

    NOTT.

SESTINA I.

A qualunque animale alberga in terra.

NIGHT BRINGS HIM NO REST. HE IS THE PREY OF DESPAIR.

      To every animal that dwells on earth,
    Except to those which have in hate the sun,
    Their time of labour is while lasts the day;
    But when high heaven relumes its thousand stars,
    This seeks his hut, and that its native wood,
    Each finds repose, at least until the dawn.

    But I, when fresh and fair begins the dawn
    To chase the lingering shades that cloak’d the earth,
    Wakening the animals in every wood,
    No truce to sorrow find while rolls the sun;
    And, when again I see the glistening stars,
    Still wander, weeping, wishing for the day.

    When sober evening chases the bright day,
    And this our darkness makes for others dawn,
    Pensive I look upon the cruel stars
    Which framed me of such pliant passionate earth,
    And curse the day that e’er I saw the sun,
    Which makes me native seem of wildest wood.

    And yet methinks was ne’er in any wood,
    So wild a denizen, by night or day,
    As she whom thus I blame in shade and sun: 
    Me night’s first sleep o’ercomes not, nor the dawn,
    For though in mortal coil I tread the earth,
    My firm and fond desire is from the stars.

    Ere up to you I turn, O lustrous stars,
    Or downwards in love’s labyrinthine wood,
    Leaving my fleshly frame in mouldering earth,
    Could I but pity find in her, one day
    Would many years redeem, and to the dawn
    With bliss enrich me from the setting sun!

    Oh! might I be with her where sinks the sun,
    No other eyes upon us but the stars,
    Alone, one sweet night, ended by no dawn,
    Nor she again transfigured in green wood,
    To cheat my clasping arms, as on the day,
    When Phoebus vainly follow’d her on earth.

    I shall lie low in earth, in crumbling wood. 
    And clustering stars shall gem the noon of day,
    Ere on so sweet a dawn shall rise that sun.

    MACGREGOR.