HY art thou silent? Is thy love a plant Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air Of absence withers what was once so fair? Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant? Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilantBound to thy service with unceasing care, The mind's least generous wish a mendicant For naught but what thy happiness could spare. Speak-though this soft warm heart, once free to hold A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine, Be left more desolate, more dreary cold Than a forsaken bird's-nest filled with snow 'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know! HOUGH joy attend Thee orient at the birth To watch thy course when Daylight, fled from earth, And splendour slowly mustering. Since the Sun, The mountain borders of this seat of care, VALEDICTORY SONNET. ERVING no haughty Muse, my hands have here Disposed some cultured Flowerets (drawn from spots Where they bloomed singly, or in scattered knots), Each kind in several beds of one parterre; Both to allure the casual Loiterer, And that, so placed, my Nurslings may requite But metaphor dismissed, and thanks apart, Reader, farewell! My last words let them be If in this book Fancy and Truth agree; If simple Nature trained by careful Art |