Sonnet XXIII.

"As the lone, frighted user of a night-road     Suddenly turns round, nothing to detect,     Yet on his fear's sense keepeth still the load"

"He that goes back does, since he goes, advance,     Though he doth not advance who goeth back,     And he that seeks, though he on nothing chanc"

"My love, and not I, is the egoist.     My love for thee loves itself more than thee;     Ay, more than me, in whom it doth exist,     And makes"

"My weary life, that lives unsatisfied     On the foiled off-brink of being e'er but this,     To whom the power to will hath been denied     An"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"