Volume 3 — SONNET XXXVIII. DECEMBER 1ST, 1782.

If he whose bosom with no transport swells In vernal airs and hours commits the crime Of sullenness to Nature, ’gainst the time, And its great Ruler, he alike rebels Who seriousness and pious dread repels, And awless gazes on the faded clime, Dim in the gloom, and pale in the hoar rime That o’er the bleak and dreary prospect steals.— Spring claims our tender, grateful, gay delight; Winter our sympathy and sacred fear; And sure the hearts that pay not pity’s rite O’er wide calamity; that careless hear Creation’s wail, neglect, amid her blight, The solemn Lesson of the Ruin’d Year.