Whose poison’d iron rankles in his breast,
Flies and more grieves the more the chase is press’d,
So I, with Love’s keen arrow in my heart,
Endure at once my death and my delight,
Rack’d with long grief, and weary with vain flight.
MACGREGOR.
Those gentle hills
which hold my spirit still
(For though I fly, my heart
there must remain),
Are e’er before me,
whilst my burthen’s pain,
By love bestow’d, I
bear with patient will.
I marvel oft that I can yet
fulfil
That yoke’s sweet duties,
which my soul enchain,
I seek release, but find the
effort vain;
The more I fly, the nearer
seems my ill.
So, like the stag, who, wounded
by the dart,
Its poison’d iron rankling
in his side,
Flies swifter at each quickening
anguish’d throb,—
I feel the fatal arrow at
my heart;
Yet with its poison, joy awakes
its tide;
My flight exhausts me—grief
my life doth rob!
WOLLASTON.
SONNET CLXXV.
Non dall’ Ispano Ibero all’ Indo Idaspe.
HIS WOES ARE UNEXAMPLED.
From Spanish Ebro
to Hydaspes old,
Exploring ocean in its every
nook,
From the Red Sea to the cold
Caspian shore,
In earth, in heaven one only
Phoenix dwells.
What fortunate, or what disastrous
bird
Omen’d my fate? which
Parca winds my yarn,
That I alone find Pity deaf
as asp,
And wretched live who happy
hoped to be?
Let me not speak of her, but
him her guide,
Who all her heart with love
and sweetness fills—
Gifts which, from him o’erflowing,
follow her,
Who, that my sweets may sour
and cruel be,
Dissembleth, careth not, or
will not see
That silver’d, ere my
time, these temples are.
MACGREGOR.
SONNET CLXXVI.
Voglia mi sprona; Amor mi guida e scorge.
HE DESCRIBES HIS STATE, SPECIFYING THE DATE OF HIS ATTACHMENT.
Passion impels
me, Love escorts and leads,
Pleasure attracts me, habits
old enchain,
Hope with its flatteries comforts
me again,
And, at my harass’d
heart, with fond touch pleads.
Poor wretch! it trusts her
still, and little heeds
The blind and faithless leader
of our train;
Reason is dead, the senses
only reign:
One fond desire another still
succeeds.
Virtue and honour, beauty,
courtesy,
With winning words and many
a graceful way,
My heart entangled in that
laurel sweet.
In thirteen hundred seven
and twenty, I
—’Twas April,
the first hour, on its sixth day—
Enter’d Love’s
labyrinth, whence is no retreat.
MACGREGOR.