XLVII.

TO THE MEMORY OF RAISLEY CALVERT.

CALVERT! it must not be unheard by them
Who may respect my name, that I to thee
Owed many years of early liberty.

This care was thine when sickness did condemn
Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem:
That I, if frugal and severe, might stray
Where'er I liked; and finally array

My temples with the Muse's diadem.

Hence, if in freedom I have loved the truth,
If there be aught of pure, or good, or great,
In my past verse; or shall be, in the lays
Of higher mood, which now I meditate, -
It gladdens me, O worthy, short-lived Youth!
To think how much of this will be thy praise.

MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS.

PART SECOND.

I.

SCORN not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours;- with this Key Shakspeare unlocked his heart; the melody

Of this small Lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; A thousand times this Pipe did Tasso sound; Camöens soothed with it an Exile's grief;

The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle Leaf

Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm Lamp,

It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand

The Thing became a Trumpet, whence he blew Soul-animating strains-alas, too few!