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

by Charlotte Smith

SONNET LXXXII.

TO THE SHADE OF BURNS.

MUTE is thy wild harp, now, O Bard sublime!
    Who, amid Scotia's mountain solitude,
Great Nature taught to "build the lofty rhyme,"
    And even beneath the daily pressure, rude,
Of labouring Poverty, thy generous blood,
Fired with the love of freedom—Not subdued
    Wert thou by thy low fortune: But a time
    Like this we live in, when the abject chime
Of echoing Parasite is best approved,
    Was not for thee—Indignantly is fled
Thy noble Spirit; and no longer moved
    By all the ills o'er which thine heart has bled,
    Associate worthy of the illustrious dead,
Enjoys with them "the Liberty it loved."