University of Virginia Library

NO WIND, NOT EVEN A FLUTTERING BREATH

SONNET I

No wind, not even a fluttering breath had given
Apparent motion to that land girt bay,
Still as the stagnant soul, the water lay
Sombre beneath the starless cope of Heaven,
Save where it met the shore, or rippled 'round
A few worn trunks that near it stood upright,
And there—broke into sparkling lines of light
Making a faint and yet not mournful sound.
An image, mused I, of our changeful life!
Dark must their course be ever, who repose
On joys [?] of sense, dead to all active good;
If happiness were rightly understood,
It would be won with struggles and with blows:
Our brightest moments are struck out in strife.

[Sonnet] II

Such were my thoughts or rather such my fears
For one brief moment of mistrusting grief,
Fears that have not become a fixed belief
In the still progress of some happy years.
True that an active life gives wider scope
To all those virtues which renown command,
But do not hearts at peace best understand
Their earthly duty and their heavenly hope?
If skies are brightest when few clouds are there,
And the vex'd wave bear stars upon its crest,
Go view that wave beneath the day at rest;
Only the wood or hill-embosom'd mere
Sleeps in eternal calm, by storms unriven
Fill'd with the image of glad earth and Heaven.