A Sonnet

Weeping, murmuring, complaining,
Lost to every gay delight;
MYRA, too sincere for feigning,
Fears th' approaching bridal night.

Yet, why impair thy bright perfection?
Or dim thy beauty with a tear?
Had MYRA followed my direction,
She long had wanted cause of fear.

Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish novelist, playwright, and poet, best known for his novel 'The Vicar of Wakefield' (1766), his pastoral poem 'The Deserted Village' (1770), and his play 'She Stoops to Conquer' (1773). He was a versatile writer with works ranging from prose to poetry to drama and was a central figure in the literary circle known as the 'Club' alongside Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke. His writing often depicted rural life and he became an important part of 18th-century English literature.

Oliver Goldsmith

Translation

Oliver Goldsmith, Simple Poetry

Epitaph On Edward Purdon

Oliver Goldsmith, Simple Poetry

On A Beautiful Youth Struck Blind With Lightning

Oliver Goldsmith, Simple Poetry

Elegy On The Death Of A Mad Dog

Oliver Goldsmith, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Sonnet

Your own fair youth, you care so little for it,
    Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances
    Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.
I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.

If ever, in time to come, you would explore it--
    Your old self whose thoughts went like last year's pansies,
    Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;
In my unfailing praises now I store it.

To keep all joys of yours from Time's estranging,
    I shall be then a treasury where your gay,
            Happy, and pensive past for ever is.

I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,
    In which your June has never passed away.
            Walk there awhile among my memories.

Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

Sonnet. To Melancholy.

To thy unhappy courts a lonely guest
I come, corroding Melancholy, where,
Sequester'd from the world, this woe-worn breast
May yet indulge a solitary tear!
For what should cheer the wretch's struggling heart;
What lead him thro' misfortunes gloomy shades;
When retrospection wings her keenest dart,
And hope's dim land in misery's ocean fades?
Adieu, for ever! visionary joys,
Delusive shadows of a short-liv'd hour;
The rod of woe invincible, destroys
The light, the fairy fabric of your pow'r!
How short of bliss the sublunary reign,
How long the clouded days of misery and pain!

Thomas Gent

Sonnet CXXIV.

Quel sempre acerbo ed onorato giorno.

HE RECALLS HER AS HE SAW HER WHEN IN TEARS.


    That ever-painful, ever-honour'd day
So left her living image on my heart
Beyond or lover's wit or poet's art,
That oft to it will doting memory stray.
A gentle pity softening her bright mien,
Her sorrow there so sweet and sad was heard,
Doubt in the gazer's bosom almost stirr'd
Goddess or mortal, which made heaven serene.
Fine gold her hair, her face as sunlit snow,
Her brows and lashes jet, twin stars her eyne,
Whence the young archer oft took fatal aim;
Each loving lip--whence, utterance sweet and low
Her pent grief found--a rose which rare pearls line,
Her tears of crystal and her sighs of flame.

MACGREGOR.


    That ever-hon...

Francesco Petrarca

Sonnet XXXIV.

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.

Anna Seward

Sonnet

Your own fair youth, you care so little for it,
    Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances
    Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.
I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.

If ever, in time to come, you would explore it-
    Your old self whose thoughts went like last year's pansies,
    Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;
In my unfailing praises now I store it.

To keep all joys of yours from Time's estranging,
    I shall be then a treasury where your gay,
    Happy, and pensive past for ever is.

I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,
    In which your June has never passed away.
    Walk there awhile among my memories.

Alice Meynell

Sonnet X. To Honora Sneyd.

HONORA, shou'd that cruel time arrive
    When 'gainst my truth thou should'st my errors poize,
    Scorning remembrance of our vanish'd joys;
    When for the love-warm looks, in which I live,
But cold respect must greet me, that shall give
    No tender glance, no kind regretful sighs;
    When thou shalt pass me with averted eyes,
    Feigning thou see'st me not, to sting, and grieve,
And sicken my sad heart, I cou'd not bear
    Such dire eclipse of thy soul-cheering rays;
    I cou'd not learn my struggling heart to tear
From thy lov'd form, that thro' my memory strays;
    Nor in the pale horizon of Despair
    Endure the wintry and the darken'd days.

April 1773.

Anna Seward