| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | II. Consolatory Power of a Love of Nature | | By Anna Seward (1747–1809) |
| | | THE EVENING shines in May’s luxuriant pride, | |
| And all the sunny hills at distance glow, | |
| And all the brooks, that through the valley flow, | |
| Seem liquid gold. O, had my fate denied | |
| Leisure, and power to taste the sweets that glide | 5 |
| Through wakened minds, as the blest seasons go | |
| On their still varying progress, for the woe | |
| My heart has felt what balm had been supplied? | |
| But where great Nature smiles, as here she smiles, | |
| ’Mid verdant vales, and gently swelling hills, | 10 |
| And glassy lakes, and mazy murmuring rills, | |
| And narrow wood-wild lanes, her spell beguiles | |
| Th’ impatient sighs of grief, and reconciles | |
| Poetic minds to life, with all her ills. | | | | |
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