SONNET.

Still he is absent though the buds of Spring

Bursting, have flung their freshness o’er the earth,

And all its brightest flowers have waked to birth

The perfume in their petals slumbering;—

The bright green leaves of Summer’s garnishing

Have blanched away;—the wild bird’s song of mirth

Is hushed into an echo, and his wing

Chill’d by the breath the north wind scatters forth:—

And yet the loved one is not with us, yet

He lingers in some foreign beauty’s bower,

While we the lonely, we in vain regret

The distant rapture of the greeting hour,

Till hope seems, poised upon its wavering wings,

Departing like the fair earth’s loveliest things.

E. J. P.