SONNET

At midnight, in the silence, when the eyes
Of happier mortals balmy slumbers close,
The weary tale of my unnumbered woes
To Chloris and to Heaven is wont to rise.
And when the light of day returning dyes
The portals of the east with tints of rose,
With undiminished force my sorrow flows
In broken accents and in burning sighs.
And when the sun ascends his star-girt throne,
And on the earth pours down his midday beams,
Noon but renews my wailing and my tears;
And with the night again goes up my moan.
Yet ever in my agony it seems
To me that neither Heaven nor Chloris hears."

The sonnet pleased Camilla, and still more Anselmo, for he praised it and
said the lady was excessively cruel who made no return for sincerity so
manifest. On which Camilla said, "Then all that love-smitten poets say is
true?"

"As poets they do not tell the truth," replied Lothario; "but as lovers
they are not more defective in expression than they are truthful."

"There is no doubt of that," observed Anselmo, anxious to support and
uphold Lothario's ideas with Camilla, who was as regardless of his design
as she was deep in love with Lothario; and so taking delight in anything
that was his, and knowing that his thoughts and writings had her for