Sonnet. On Receiving A Gift.

"'Twas in the middle of the night,     To sleep young William tried,     When Mary's ghost came stealing in,     And stood at his bedside."

"It's a shame, so it is, - men can't Let alone     Jobs as is Woman's right to do - and go about there Own -     Theirs Reforms enuff Alreddy wi"

"Farewell, farewell, to my mother's own daughter.     The child that she wet-nursed is lapp'd in the wave;     The Mussulman, coming to fish in t"

"The curse of Adam, the old curse of all,     Though I inherit in this feverish life     Of worldly toil, vain wishes, and hard strife,     And"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"