But nought, alas! for me the season brings,
    Save heavier sighs, from my sad bosom drawn
    By her who can from heaven unlock its springs;
    And warbling birds and flower-bespangled lawn,
    And fairest acts of ladies fair and mild,
    A desert seem, and its brute tenants wild.

    DACRE.

      Zephyr returns and winter’s rage restrains,
    With herbs, with flowers, his blooming progeny! 
    Now Progne prattles, Philomel complains,
    And spring assumes her robe of various dye;
    The meadows smile, heaven glows, nor Jove disdains
    To view his daughter with delighted eye;
    While Love through universal nature reigns,
    And life is fill’d with amorous sympathy! 
    But grief, not joy, returns to me forlorn,
    And sighs, which from my inmost heart proceed
    For her, by whom to heaven its keys were borne. 
    The song of birds, the flower-enamell’d mead,
    And graceful acts, which most the fair adorn,
    A desert seem, and beasts of savage prey!

    CHARLEMONT.

SONNET XLIII.

Quel rosignuol che si soave piagne.

THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE REMINDS HIM OF HIS UNHAPPY LOT.

      Yon nightingale, whose bursts of thrilling tone,
    Pour’d in soft sorrow from her tuneful throat,
    Haply her mate or infant brood bemoan,
    Filling the fields and skies with pity’s note;
    Here lingering till the long long night is gone,
    Awakes the memory of my cruel lot—­
    But I my wretched self must wail alone: 
    Fool, who secure from death an angel thought! 
    O easy duped, who thus on hope relies! 
    Who would have deem’d the darkness, which appears,
    From orbs more brilliant than the sun should rise? 
    Now know I, made by sad experience wise,
    That Fate would teach me by a life of tears,
    On wings how fleeting fast all earthly rapture flies!

    WRANGHAM.

      Yon nightingale, whose strain so sweetly flows,
    Mourning her ravish’d young or much-loved mate,
    A soothing charm o’er all the valleys throws
    And skies, with notes well tuned to her sad state: 
    And all the night she seems my kindred woes
    With me to weep and on my sorrows wait;
    Sorrows that from my own fond fancy rose,
    Who deem’d a goddess could not yield to fate. 
    How easy to deceive who sleeps secure! 
    Who could have thought that to dull earth would turn
    Those eyes that as the sun shone bright and pure? 
    Ah! now what Fortune wills I see full sure: 
    That loathing life, yet living I should see
    How few its joys, how little they endure!

    ANON., OX., 1795.