Elegiac Sonnets, and Other Poems, Volume 2, The Second Edition/To Vesper

by Charlotte Smith

TO VESPER.

FROM THE SAME

Thou! Who behold'st with dewy eye
    The sleeping leaves and folded flowers,
And hear'st the night-wind lingering sigh
    Thro' shadowy woods and twilight bowers;
Thou wast the signal once that seem'd to say,
Hillario's beating heart reproved my long delay.

I see thy emerald lustre stream
    O'er these rude cliffs and cavern'd shore;
But here, orisons to thy beam
    The woodland chantress pours no more;
Nor I, as once, thy lamp propitious hail,
Seen indistinct thro' tears; confus'd, and dim, and pale.

Soon shall thy arrowy radiance shine
    On the broad ocean's restless wave,
Where this poor cold swoln form of mine
    Shall shelter in its billowy grave,
Safe from the scorn the World's sad outcasts prove.
Unconscious of the pain of ill-requited Love.