Elegiac Sonnets, and Other Poems, Volume 2, The Second Edition/Sonnet LXVII

by Charlotte Smith

SONNET LXVII.

ON PASSING OVER A DREARY TRACT OF COUNTRY,
AND NEAR THE RUINS OF A DESERTED
CHAPEL, DURING A TEMPEST.

SWIFT fleet the billowy clouds along the sky,
    Earth seems to shudder at the storm aghast;
While only beings as forlorn as I,
    Court the chill horrors of the howling blast.
Even round yon crumbling walls, in search of food,
    The ravenous Owl foregoes his evening flight,
And in his cave, within the deepest wood,
    The Fox eludes the tempest of the night.
But to my heart congenial is the gloom
    Which hides me from a World I wish to shun;
That scene where Ruin saps the mouldering tomb,
    Suits with the sadness of a wretch undone.
Nor is the deepest shade, the keenest air,
Black as my fate, or cold as my despair.