Sonnet

In the deep flushing of the Western sky,
The new moon stands as she would fain be gone,
And, dropping earthward, greet Endymion:
If Death uplift me, even thus should I,
Companioned by the silver spirits high
And stationed on the sunset’s crimson towers,
Bend longing over earth’s broad stretch of bowers,
To where my love beneath their shades might lie;
For I should weary of the endless blue,
Should weary of my ever-growing light,
If that one soul, so beautiful and true,
Were hidden by earth’s vapors from my sight,
Should wane and wane as changeful planets do,
And move on slowly, wrapt in mine own night.

Where this text comes from

First published in The Poems of Maria Lowell (1907). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/maria-lowell_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L14.

Cite this poem

Maria Lowell (1821–1853). “Sonnet.” First published in The Poems of Maria Lowell (1907). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/maria-lowell/sonnet-2/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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