“A Sonnet: by Miss Hays”  (1785)

“A Sonnet: by Miss Hays,” The Universal Magazine 77 (1785), 329.

Ah let not Hope fallacious, airy, wild,

Illusive rays amid the tempest blend;

No more my soul with varied feeling’s rend,

Soft Sensibility – Refinement’s child.

May Apathy her wand oblivious spread,

Steep’d in Lethean waves with poppys twin’d,

And gently bending o’er my languid head

To long repose, beguile a wayward mind.

While keen Reflection throbs in every vein,

Thy aid, Oblivion, vainly I implore;

This heart shall tremble with the sense of pain,

Till Death’s cold hand a lasting peace restore.

Ah, say, can Reason’s feebler power controul

The finer movements of the feeling soul?