To Laura In Death. Sonnet LXXIV.

Spinse amor e dolor ove ir non debbe.     REFLECTING THAT LAURA IS IN HEAVEN, HE REPENTS HIS EXCESSIVE GRIEF, AND IS CONSOLED.         Sorrow and Love encouraged my poor tongue,     Discreet in sadness, where it should not go,     To speak of her for whom I burn'd and sung,     What, even were it true, 'twere wrong to show.     That blessd saint my miserable state     Might surely soothe, and ease my spirit's strife,     Since she in heaven is now domesticate     With Him who ever ruled her heart in life.     Wherefore I am contented and consoled,     Nor would again in life her form behold;     Nay, I prefer to die, and live alone.     Fairer than ever to my mental eye,     I see her soaring with the angels high,     Before our Lord, her maker and my own.     MACGREGOR.         My love and grief compell'd me to proclaim     My heart's lament, and urged me to convey     That, were it true, of her I should not say     Who woke alike my song and bosom's flame.     For I should comfort find, 'mid this world's shame,     To mark her soul's beatified array,     To think that He who here had own'd its sway,     Doth now within his home its presence claim.     And true I comfort find--myself resign'd,     I would not woo her back to earthly gloom;     Oh! rather let me die, or live still lone!     My mental eye, that holds her there enshrined,     Now paints her wing'd, bright with celestial bloom,     Prostrate beneath our mutual Heaven's throne.     WOLLASTON.