Sonnet LVIII
Elegiac Sonnets, and Other Poems, Volume 1, The Ninth Edition
WHEN on some balmy-breathing night of SpringThe happy child, to whom the world is new,Pursues the evening moth, of mealy wing,Or from the heath-bell beats the sparkling dew;He sees before his inexperienced eyesThe brilliant Glow-worm, like a meteor, shineOn the turf-bank;—amazed, and pleased, he cries,"Star of the dewy grass!—I make thee mine!"—Then, ere he sleep, collects "the moisten'd" flower,And bids soft leaves his glittering prize enfold,And dreams that Fairy-lamps illume his bower:Yet with the morning shudders to beholdHis lucid treasure, rayless as the dust!—So turn the world's bright joys to cold and blank disgust.