[1]: When this Sonnet was written, the Subject of it had languished three years beneath repeated paralytic strokes, which had greatly enfeebled his limbs, and impaired his understanding. Contrary to all expectation he survived three more years, subject, through their progress, to the same frequent and dreadful attacks, though in their intervals he was serene and apparently free from pain or sickness.
SONNET LXIII.
TO COLEBROOKE DALE.
Thy Genius, Colebrooke, faithless to his charge,
Amid thy woods and vales, thy rocks and streams,
Form'd for the Train that haunt poetic dreams,
Naiads, and Nymphs,—now hears the toiling Barge
And the swart Cyclops ever-clanging forge
Din in thy dells;—permits the dark-red gleams,
From umber'd fires on all thy hills, the beams,
Solar and pure, to shroud with columns large
Of black sulphureous smoke, that spread their veils
Like funeral crape upon the sylvan robe
Of thy romantic rocks, pollute thy gales,
And stain thy glassy floods;—while o'er the globe
To spread thy stores metallic, this rude yell
Drowns the wild woodland song, and breaks the Poet's spell.
SONNET LXIV.
TO MR. HENRY CARY,
ON THE PUBLICATION OF HIS SONNETS.
Prais'd be the Poet, who the Sonnet's claim,
Severest of the orders that belong
Distinct and separate to the Delphic Song,
Shall venerate, nor its appropriate name
Lawless assume. Peculiar is its frame,
From him deriv'd, who shunn'd the City Throng,
And warbled sweet thy rocks and streams among,
Lonely Valclusa!—and that Heir of Fame,
Our greater Milton, hath, by many a lay
Form'd on that arduous model, fully shown
That English Verse may happily display
Those strict energic measures, which alone
Deserve the name of Sonnet, and convey
A grandeur, grace and spirit, all their own.
SONNET LXV.
TO THE SAME.
Marcellus, since the ardors of my strain
To thy young eyes and kindling fancy, gleam
With somewhat of the vivid hues, that stream
From Poesy's bright orb, each envious stain
Shed by dull Critics, venal, vex'd and vain,
Seems recompens'd at full;—and so wou'd seem
Did not maturer Sons of Phœbus deem
My verse Aonian.—Thou, in time, shalt gain,
Like them, amid the letter'd World, that sway
Which makes encomium fame;—so thou adorn,
Extend, refine and dignify thy lay,
And Indolence, and Syren Pleasure scorn;
Then, at high noon, thy Genius shall display
The splendors promis'd in its shining morn.