Act 2 — SONNETS.

By Enfield lanes, and Winchmore's verdant hill, Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk: The fair Maria, as a vestal, still; And Emma brown, exuberant in talk. With soft and Lady speech the first applies The mild correctives that to grace belong To her redundant friend, who her defies With jest, and mad discourse, and bursts of song. O differing Pair, yet sweetly thus agreeing, What music from your happy discord rises, While your companion hearing each, and seeing, Nor this nor that, but both together, prizes; This lesson teaching, which our souls may strike, That harmonies may be in things unlike!

I was not train'd in Academic bowers, And to those learned streams I nothing owe Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow; Mine have been anything but studious hours. Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers, Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap; My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, And I walk gowned; feel unusual powers. Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech, Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain; And my skull teems with notions infinite. Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach Truths, which transcend the searching Schoolmen's vein, And half had stagger'd that stout Stagirite.

Rare artist! who with half thy tools, or none, Canst execute with ease thy curious art, And press thy powerful'st meanings on the heart, Unaided by the eye, expression's throne! While each blind sense, intelligential grown Beyond its sphere, performs the effect of sight: Those orbs alone, wanting their proper might,. All motionless and silent seem to moan The unseemly negligence of nature's hand, That left them so forlorn. What praise is thine, O mistress of the passions; artist fine! Who dost our souls against our sense command, Plucking the horror from a sightless face, Lending to blank deformity a grace.

Who first invented work, and bound the free And holiday-rejoicing spirit down To the ever-haunting importunity Of business in the green fields, and the town— To plough, loom, anvil, spade—and oh! most sad To that dry drudgery at the—desk's dead wood? Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, That round and round incalculably reel— For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel— In that red realm from which are no returnings: Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye He, and his thoughts, keep pensive working-day.

They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke, That like a mill-stone on man's mind doth press, Which only works and business can redress: Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke, Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke. But might I, fed with silent meditation, Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation— Improbus Labor, which my spirits hath broke— I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit: Fling in more days than went to make the gem That crown'd the white top of Methusalem: Yea on my weak neck take, and never forfeit, Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky, The heaven-sweet burden of eternity.

Rogers, of all the men that I have known But slightly, who have died, your Brother's loss Touch'd me most sensibly. There came across My mind an image of the cordial tone Of your fraternal meetings, where a guest I more than once have sat; and grieve to think, That of that threefold cord one precious link By Death's rude hand is sever'd from the rest. Of our old gentry he appear'd a stem— A Magistrate who, while the evil-doer He kept in terror, could respect the Poor, And not for every trifle harass them, As some, divine and laic, too oft do. This man's a private loss, and public too.

"Suck, baby, suck! mother's love grows by giving; Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting; Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting. "Kiss, baby, kiss! mother's lips shine by kisses; Choke the warm breath that else would fall in blessings; Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings. "Hang, baby, hang! mother's love loves such forces, Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging; Black manhood comes, when violent lawless courses Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging." So sang a wither'd Beldam energetical, And bann'd the ungiving door with lips prophetical.