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Sonnet XXXIV.

Topics: classic

When Death, or adverse Fortune's ruthless gale,         Tears our best hopes away, the wounded Heart         Exhausted, leans on all that can impart         The charm of Sympathy; her mutual wail      How soothing! never can her warm tears fail         To balm our bleeding grief's severest smart;         Nor wholly vain feign'd Pity's solemn art,         Tho' we should penetrate her sable veil.      Concern, e'en known to be assum'd, our pains         Respecting, kinder welcome far acquires         Than cold Neglect, or Mirth that Grief profanes.      Thus each faint Glow-worm of the Night conspires,         Gleaming along the moss'd and darken'd lanes,         To cheer the Gloom with her unreal fires.      June 1780.

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"When Death, or adverse Fortune's ruthless gale,..."

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"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"

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