SONNETS.

SONNETS.

TO CAPEL LOFFT, ESQ.

LOFFT, unto thee, one tributary song,

The simple Muse, admiring, fain would bring; She longs to lisp thee to the listening throng,

And with thý name to bid the woodlands ring. Fain would she blazon all thy virtues forth,

Thy warm philanthropy, thy justice mild, Would say how thou didst foster kindred worth,

And to thy bosom snatch'd misfortune's child: Firm she would paint thee, with becoming zeal, Upright, and learned, as the Pylian sire,

Would say how sweetly thou could'st sweep the lyre, And shew thy labours for the public weal,

Ten thousand virtues tell with joys supreme,

But ah! she shrinks abash'd before the arduous theme.

TO THE MOON.

WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER.

SUBLIME, emerging from the misty verge
Of the horizon dim, thee, Moon, I hail,
As sweeping o'er the leafless grove, the gale
Seems to repeat the year's funereal dirge.
Now Autumn sickens on the languid sight,
And falling leaves bestrew the wanderer's way,
Now unto thee, pale arbitress of night,
With double joy my homage do I pay.
When clouds disguise the glories of the day,
And stern November sheds her boisterous blight,
How doubly sweet to mark the moony ray
Shoot through the mist from the etherial height,
And, still unchang'd, back to the memory bring
The smiles Favonian of life's earliest spring.