Charlotte Turner Smith
          
Elegiac sonnets. Volume 1 of 2
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SONNET LVI.

THE CAPTIVE ESCAPED IN THE WILDS OF AMERICA.
ADDRESSED TO THE HON. MRS. O'NEIL.
IF, by his torturing, savage foes untrac'd,
         The breathless Captive gain some trackless glade,
Yet hears the war-whoop howl along the waste,
         And dreads the reptile-monsters of the shade;
The giant reeds, that murmur round the flood,
         Seem to conceal some hideous form beneath;
And every hollow blast that shakes the wood,
         Speaks to his trembling heart, of woe and death.
With horror fraught, and desolate dismay,
         On such a wanderer falls the starless night;
But if, far streaming, a propitious ray
         Leads to some amicable fort his fight;
He hails the beam benign that guides his way,
         As I, my Harriet, bless thy friendship's cheering light.
 
 
 
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