SONNET TO LOVE. Helen Maria Williams Alexander Huber Editor Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Broad Street Oxford OX1 3BG UK
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive
Taylor Institution Library St Giles' Oxford OX1 3NA UK info@eighteenthcenturypoetry.org https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/
Oxford This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Williams, Helen Maria, 1759-1827. Poems on various subjects: with introductory remarks on the present state of science and literature in France. London G. and W. B. Whittaker 1823 p. 211.

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SONNET TO LOVE . This and the seven following Sonnets were inserted , several years ago , in a translation I made of Bernardin de Saint Pierre's novel of Paul and Virginia , while I was in prison during the reign of terror , and which served to cheat the days of captivity of their weary length . The translation was , I believe , never published in England , where the Sonnets are little known . They are adapted to the peculiar situations and scenery of the work . AH , Love ! ere yet I knew thy fatal power , Bright glow'd the colour of my youthful days , As on the sultry zone the torrid rays , That paint the broad-leav'd plantain's glossy bower : Calm was my bosom as this silent hour , When o'er the deep , scarce heard , the zephyr strays , 'Midst the cool tamarinds indolently plays , Nor from the orange shakes its od'rous flower : — But ah ! since Love has all my heart possest , That desolated heart what sorrows tear ! Disturb'd , and wild as ocean's troubled breast , When the hoarse tempest of the night is there ! Yet my complaining spirit asks no rest , This bleeding bosom cherishes despair .