Volume 3 — SONNET XXI.

Proud of our lyric galaxy, I hear Of faded Genius with supreme disdain; As when we see the miser bend insane O’er his full coffers, and in accents drear Deplore imagin’d want;—and thus appear To me those moody censors, who complain, As Shaftsbury plain’d in a now boasted reign,[77] That “Poesy had left our darken’d sphere.” Whence may the present stupid dream be traced That now she shines not as in days foregone? Perchance neglected, often shine in waste Her Lights, from number into confluence run, More than when, thinly in th’ horizon placed, Each orb shone separate, and appear’d a sun.