University of Virginia Library

SONNET.

OF the rich legacies the dying leave
Remembrance of their virtue is the best:
How opulent am I in this bequest,
Which I from you my buried friends receive!
Nor force, nor fraud, can e'er my heart bereave
Of this, my noblest wealth! the miser's chest
To this is poor: this, hoarded, and carest,
Irradiates life, forbidding grief to grieve.

99

God's kindest gift! I prize it as I ought;
And bless him, that I hold it justly dear;
Review'd in daily, and in nightly thought,
I find it still with endless value fraught;
Still inexhaustible, tho' lavish'd here,
And still to be enjoyed, in truth's eternal sphere.
Manfredi.