Sonnet VIII
Oft as by chance, a little while apartThe pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn,Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart,Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn:Not though high heaven should rend would deeper aweFill me than penetrates my spirit thus,Nor all those signs the Patmian prophet sawSeem a new heaven and earth so marvelous;But, clad thenceforth in iridescent dyes,The fair world glistens, and in after daysThe memory of kind lips and laughing eyesLives in my step and lightens all my face,—So they who found the Earthly ParadiseStill breathed, returned, of that sweet, joyful place.