Poem by Anna Seward

Sonnet 56. What bashful wildness in those crystal eyes

  TO A TIMID YOUNG LADY,
  DISTRESSED BY THE ATTENTIONS OF AN AMIABLE, 
  AND ACCEPTED LOVER.

What bashful wildness in those crystal eyes,
    Fair Zillia!—Ah! more dear to Love the gaze
    That dwells upon its object, than the rays
    Of that vague glance, quick, as in summer skies
The lightning's lambent flash, when neither rise
    Thunder, nor storm.—I mark, while transport plays
    Warm in thy Lover's eye, what dread betrays
    Thy throbbing heart:—yet why from his soft sighs
Fleet'st thou so swift away?—like the young Hind[1],
    That bending stands the fountain's brim beside,
    When, with a sudden gust, the western wind
Rustles among the boughs that shade the tide:
    See, from the stream, innoxious and benign,
    Starting she bounds, with terror vain as thine!

1: “Vitas hinnuleo me similis Chloe.” Horace.

1. Sonnet 65. Marcellus, since the ardors of my strain
2. Sonnet 53. The knell of Whitehead tolls!—his cares are past
3. Sonnet 98. Since my griev'd mind some energy regains
4. Sonnet 38. If he whose bosom with no transport swells
5. Sonnet 83. Here, from laborious Art, proud Towns, ye rose!

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