WHERE the green leaves exclude the summer beam, <br />And softly bend as balmy breezes blow, <br />And where, with liquid lapse, the lucid stream <br />Across the fretted rock is heard to flow, <br />Pensive I lay: when she whom Earth conceals, <br />As if still living, to my eyes appears, <br />And pitying Heaven her angel form reveals, <br />To say--'Unhappy Petrarch, dry your tears: <br />'Ah! why, sad lover! thus before your time, <br />In grief and sadness should your life decay, <br />And like a blighted flower, your manly prime <br />In vain and hopeless sorrow fade away? <br />Ah! yield not thus to culpable despair, <br />But raise thine eyes to Heaven--and think I wait thee there.'<br /><br />Charlotte Smith<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-xv-from-petrarch/
