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

by Charlotte Smith

SONNET LXI.

SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN IN AMERICA.

ILL-omen'd bird! whose cries portentous float
    O'er yon savannah with the mournful wind;
While, as the Indian hears your piercing note,
    Dark dread of future evil fills his mind;
Wherefore with early lamentation break
    The dear delusive visions of repose?
Why from so short felicity awake
    My wounded senses to substantial woes?
O'er my sick soul thus rous'd from transient rest,
    Pale Superstition sheds her influence drear,
And to my shuddering fancy would suggest
    Thou com'st to speak of every woe I fear,
Ah! Reason little o'er the soul prevails,
When, from ideal ill, the enfeebled spirit fails!