"My heart has thanked thee, Bowles! for those soft strains Whose sadness soothes me." His sonnets were, however, neglectful of the regular Italian structure, so that under his influence, as Leigh Hunt observed, "the illegitimate order ... became such a favorite with lovers of easy writing who could string fourteen lines together, that ... it continued to fill the press with heaps of bad verses, till the genius of Wordsworth succeeded in restoring the right system." (_Essay on the Sonnet_, p. 85.) But see the notes on Wordsworth's sonnets, p. 280, below. Mary! I want a lyre with other strings, Such aid from Heaven as some have feigned they drew, An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new And undebased by praise of meaner things, That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings, I may record thy worth with honor due, In verse as musical as thou art true, And that immortalizes whom it sings. But thou hast little need. There is a book By Seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light, On which the eyes of God not rarely look, A chronicle of actions just and bright: There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine, And, since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine. (COWPER: _To Mrs. Unwin_. 1793.) Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; And students with their pensive citadels; Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest peak of Furness Fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells. In truth the prison unto which we doom Ourselves no prison is; and hence to me, In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound Within the sonnet's scanty plot of ground, Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty, Should find brief solace there, as I have found. (WORDSWORTH: _The Sonnet_. 1806.) Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honors; with this key Shakspere unlocked his heart; the melody Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief; The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp, It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand The Thing became a trumpet, whence he blew Soul-animating strains--alas, too few! (WORDSWORTH: _Scorn not the Sonnet_. 1827.)