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

by Charlotte Smith

SONNET LXXXVII.

WRITTEN IN OCTOBER.

THE blasts of Autumn as they scatter round
    The faded foliage of another year,
And muttering many a sad and solemn sound,
    Drive the pale fragments o'er the stubble sere,
Are well attuned to my dejected mood;
    (Ah! better far than airs that breathe of Spring!)
    While the high rooks, that hoarsely clamouring
Seek in black phalanx the half-leafless wood,
    I rather hear, than that enraptured lay
Harmonious, and of Love and Pleasure born,
Which from the golden furze, or flowering thorn
    Awakes the Shepherd in the ides of May;
Nature delights me most when most she mourns,
For never more to me the Spring of Hope returns!