Sonnet by Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart.
This sonnet appears immediately before Mary Shelley's 'The Mortal Immortal' in its first publication in The Keepsake for 1834, p. 70.
SONNET.
by Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart.
YEARS pass away; the worthy die, and leave
No successors their virtues to replace:
We win our way by trouble and by care;
Yet when 'tis past, it seems an arrow's flight.
For friends departed we are left to grieve,
And would again the course they ran, retrace;
For much that once was rugged, now seems fair
When memory clothes it with a soften'd light.
We cannot hope again; whence chilling age
Runs cold and feeble in our palsied veins;
No new affections will our hearts engage;
No sound of joyance in the distance reigns;
And when the cloud of darkness is before,
The rays behind us but afflict the more!