University of Virginia Library

SONNETS.

ILLEGITIMATE.

The maiden Spring came laughing down the dales,
Her fair brows arched, and on her rosebud mouth,
The balm and beauty of the lustrous South;
Through soft green fields, from hills to happy vales,
She tripped, her small feet twinkling in the sun,
Her delicate finger raised with girlish mirth,
Pointed at graybeard Winter, who, in dearth,
Toiled toward his couch, his long day labor done;
Ah no, not done! for hark! a sudden wind,
Death-laden, sweeps from realms of arctic sky,
And blurred with storm, the morn grows crazed and blind;
Then Winter, mocking, backward turns apace,
Where pallid Spring all vainly strives to fly,
And with brute buffet scars her shrinking face!

SONNET.

I cast this sorrow from me like a crown
Of bitter nettles, and unwholesome weeds,
Nursed by cold night-dews, from malignant seeds,
Ill Fortune sowed, when all the heaven did frown;
Its loathsome round I trample deeply down
In mire and dust, to burn my brain no more;
From off my brow I wipe the trickling gore,
While all about me, like keen clarions blown,
From breezy dells, and golden heights afar,
Their stern reveillé the wild March winds sound;
They wake an answering passion in my soul,
Whence, marshalled as brave warriors, taking ground
For noblest conflict, freed from doubt or dole,
Great thoughts uprising front Hope's morning star!

VERNAL PICTURES (WITHOUT AND WITHIN).

Amid fresh roses wandering, and the soft
And delicate wealth of apple-blossoms spread
In tender spirals of blent white and red,
Round the fair spaces of our blooming croft,
This morn I caught the gurgling note, so oft
Heard in the golden spring-tides that are dead,—
The swallow's note, murmuring of winter fled,
Dropped silverly from passionless calms aloft:
“O heart!” I said, “thy vernal depths unclose,
That mirror Nature's; warm airs, come and go
Of whispering ardors o'er thought's budded rose,
And half-hid flowers of sweet philosophy;
While now upglancing, now borne swift and low,
Song like the swallow darts through fancy's sky.”