Sonnet I: When Life's Realities The Soul Perceives Poem by Anna Seward

INGRATITUDE,- how deadly is thy smart,
Proceeding from the Form we fondly love!
How light, compar'd, all other sorrows prove!
Thou shed'st a night of woe, from whence depart
The gentle beams of patience, that the heart
'Mid lesser ills illume.- Thy Victims rove
Unquiet as the Ghost that haunts the grove
Where MURDER spilt the life-blood.- O! thy dart
Kills more than life, e'en all that makes it dear;
Till we the 'sensible of pain' wou'd change
For Phrenzy, that defies the bitter tear,
Or wish, in kindred callousness, to range
Where moon-ey'd IDIOCY, with fallen lip,
Drags the loose knee, and intermitting step.