Elegiac Sonnets, and Other Poems, Volume 1, The Ninth Edition/Sonnet LVIII

by Charlotte Smith

SONNET LVIII.

THE GLOW-WORM.

WHEN on some balmy-breathing night of Spring
    The happy child, to whom the world is new,
Pursues the evening moth, of mealy wing,
    Or from the heath-bell beats the sparkling dew;
He sees before his inexperienced eyes
    The brilliant Glow-worm, like a meteor, shine
On the turf-bank;—amazed, and pleased, he cries,
    "Star of the dewy grass!—I make thee mine!"—
Then, ere he sleep, collects "the moisten'd" flower,
    And bids soft leaves his glittering prize enfold,
And dreams that Fairy-lamps illume his bower:
    Yet with the morning shudders to behold
His lucid treasure, rayless as the dust!
—So turn the world's bright joys to cold and blank disgust.