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

by Charlotte Smith

SONNET LXIII.

THE GOSSAMER

O'ER faded heath-flowers spun, or thorny furze,
    The filmy Gossamer is lightly spread;
Waving in every sighing air that stirs,
    As Fairy fingers had entwined the thread:
A thousand trembling orbs of lucid dew
    Spangle the texture of the fairy loom,
As if soft Sylphs, lamenting as they flew,
    Had wept departed Summer's transient bloom:
But the wind rises, and the turf receives
    The glittering web:—So, evanescent, fade
Bright views that Youth with sanguine heart believes:
    So vanish schemes of bliss, by Fancy made;
Which, fragile as the fleeting dreams of morn,
Leave but the wither'd heath, and barren thorn!