SONNET.

ON A DISCOVERY MADE TOO LATE.

THOU bleedest, my poor heart! and thy distress Reas'ning I ponder with a scornful smile, And probe thy sore wound sternly, though the while

Swoln be mine eye, and dim with heaviness. Why didst thou listen to hope's whisper bland? Or list'ning, why forget the healing tale, When jealousy, with fev'rish fancies pale, Jarr'd thy fine fibres with a maniac's hand? Faint was that hope, and rayless. Yet 'twas fair,

And sooth'd with many a dream the hour of

rest:

Thou shouldst have lov'd it most when most opprest;

And nurs'd it with an agony of care,

Ev'n as a mother her sweet infant heir,

That wan and sickly droops upon her breast.

SONNET.

TO THE RIVER OTTER.

DEAR native brook! wild streamlet of the west! How many various-fated years have past, What blissful and what anguish'd hours, since last

I skimm'd the smooth thin stone along thy breast,

Numbering its light leaps! Yet so deep imprest

Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes

I never shut amid the sunny blaze,

But straight with all their tints thy waters rise, Thy crossing plank, thy margin's willowy maze, And bedded sand, that vein'd with various

dyes,

Gleam'd through thy bright transparence to the gaze.

Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguil'd Lone manhood's cares, yet waking fondest sighs, Ah, that once more I were a careless child!

SONNET.

SCHILLER! that hour I would have wish'd to die, If through the shudd'ring midnight I had sent,

From the dark dungeon of the tower, time

rent,

cry

That fearful voice, a famish'd father's*
That in no after moment aught less vast
Might stamp me mortal! A triumphant

shout

Black horror scream'd, and all her goblin

rout

From the more with'ring scene diminish'd past. Ah! bard tremendous in sublimity!

Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood, Wand'ring at eve, with finely frenzied eye, Beneath some vast old tempest - swinging wood!

Awhile with mute awe gazing I would brood, Then weep aloud in a wild extasy!

*The father of MOOR, in the play of "The Robbers."

SONNET.

IT was some spirit, Sheridan! that breath'd O'er thy young mind such wildly-various power; My soul hath mark'd thee in her shaping hour, Thy temples with Hymettian* flow'rets wreath'd:

"Hymettian flow'rets." Hymettus a mountain near Athens, celebrated for its honey. This alludes to Mr. Sheridan's classical attainments, and the following four lines to the exquisite sweetness and almost Italian delicacy of his poetry. In Shakspeare's "Lover's Complaint" there is a fine stanza almost prophetically characteristic of Mr. Sheridan.

So on the tip of his subduing tongue
All kind of argument and question deep,
All replication prompt and reason strong
For his advantage still did wake and sleep
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep:
He had the dialect and different skill,
Catching all passions in his craft of will:
That he did in the general bosom reign
Of young and old.

And sweet thy voice, as when o'er Laura's bier Sad music trembled through Vauclusa's glade; Sweet, as at dawn, the love-lorn serenade

That wafts soft dreams to slumber's list'ning ear. Now patriot rage and indignation high

Swell the full tones! And now thine eye-beams dance

Meanings of scorn and wit's quaint revelry!
Writhes inly from the bosom-probing glance
Th' apostate by the brainless rout ador'd,
As erst that elder Fiend beneath great Michael's
sword.

THE END.

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.