 | The Poetical Works of Caroline Bowles Southey |  |
SONNET,
WRITTEN ON READING TASSO'S LIFE.
Rest, weary spirit, from thy labours past—Thy doubts, thy wrongs, thy painful wanderings o'er,
Through troubled seas, thy bark has reached at last,
The quiet haven of a friendly shore.
Yes—“after death”—around thy pallid brow
They wreathed the laurel, long, too long denied,
For which, in all the ambitious ardent glow
Of conscious worth, thy once proud spirit sighed.
But when the mortal scene was closing fast
Around thee, Tasso! on that proferred crown
What cold, contemptuous glances didst thou cast!
Earth could no longer chain the spirit down,
That, fixing on a heavenly crown its trust,
Bequeathed the earthly to its mouldering dust.
| The Poetical Works of Caroline Bowles Southey | |