How void of meaning seems the barren earth!
How dwindles all its pride, to infants’ toys!
For me, all life is quickened into birth,
Only by the love, that turns my grief to joys:
Sullen, I look out upon the bleak dim morn,
And curse the cold, the climate, and the cloud:
I match those frowns with thy imagined scorn;
Sudden, the sun illumes the misty shroud;
The thought, that’s full of thee, discerns no grief,
But builds a summer palace in the air;
It sifts compounded woes, torturing their sheaf,
That bitter thoughts may hide, ’mid thoughts more fair;
The mind returns from thee, winged with delight;
Unsated, it soon meditates new flight.