Page:Elegiac Sonnets and Other Essays The Second Edition.pdf/36

[  22    ] SONNET, FROM PETRARCH. HERE the green leaves exclude the summer beam,
 * And softly bend as balmy breezes blow,

And where, with liquid lapse, the lucid stream
 * Across the fretted rock is heard to flow,

Pensive I lay; when she whom earth conceals,
 * As if still living, to my eyes appears,

And pitying Heaven her angel form reveals,
 * To say, Unhappy, dry your tears;

Ah! why, sad lover, thus, before your time,
 * In grief and anguish. should your life decay,

And, like a blighted flower, your manly prime
 * In vain and hopeless sorrow fade away?

Ah! wherefore should you mourn, that her you love, Snatch'd from a world of woe, survives in bliss above? SONNET,