[[403]]While most were wooing wealth, or gaily swerving [5]
To pleasure's secret haunts, and some apart
Stood strong in pride, self-conscious of deserving,
To you I gave my whole weak wishing heart.

And when I met the maid that realised
Your fair creations, and had won her kindness, [10]
Say, but for her if aught on earth I prized!
Your dreams alone I dreamt, and caught your blindness.

O grief!—but farewell, Love! I will go play me
With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me.

1806.

FOOTNOTES:

[402:1] First published in the Courier, September 27, 1806, and reprinted in the Morning Herald, October 11, 1806, and in the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1815, vol. lxxxv, p. 448: included in Literary Remains, 1836, i. 280, and in Letters, Conversations, &c., [by T. Allsop], 1836, i. 143. First collected, appendix, 1863. This sonnet is modelled upon and in part borrowed from Lord Brooke's (Fulke Greville) Sonnet LXXIV of Coelica: and was inscribed on the margin of Charles Lamb's copy of Certain Learned and Elegant Works of the Right Honourable Fulke Lord Brooke . . . 1633, p. 284.

'Cælica'. Sonnet lxxiv.

Farewell sweet Boy, complaine not of my truth;
Thy Mother lov'd thee not with more devotion;
For to thy Boyes play I gave all my youth
Yong Master, I did hope for your promotion.

While some sought Honours, Princes thoughts observing,
Many woo'd Fame, the child of paine and anguish,
Others judg'd inward good a chiefe deserving,
I in thy wanton Visions joy'd to languish.