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TO FORTUNE: ON BUYING A TICKET IN THE IRISH LOTTERY by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Poet Analysis

First Line: PROMPTRESS OF UNNUMBER'D SIGHS
Last Line: AND YIELD THE UNSUNN'D STRANGER TO THE WESTERN GALE!
Subject(s): LOTTERIES;

@3Composed during a walk to and from the Queen's Head, Gray's Inn
Lane, Holborn, and Hornsby's and Co., Cornhill.@1

Promptress of unnumber'd sighs,
O snatch that circling bandage from thine eyes!
O look, and smile! No common prayer
Solicits, Fortune! thy propitious care!
For,not a silken son of dress
I clink the gilded chains of @3politesse,@1
Nor ask thy boon what time I scheme
Unholy Pleasure's frail and feverish dream;
Nor yet my view life's @3dazzle@1 blinds --
Pomp! -- Grandeur! Power! -- I give you to the winds!
Let the little bosom cold
Melt only at the sunbeam ray of gold --
My pale cheeks glow -- the big drops start --
The rebel @3Feeling@1 riots at my heart!
And if in lonely durance pent,
Thy poor mite mourn a brief imprisonment --
That mite at Sorrow's faintest sound
Leaps from its scrip with an elastic bound!
But oh! if ever song thine ear
Might soothe, O haste with fost'ring hand to rear
One Flower of Hope! At Love's behest,
Trembling, I plac'd it in my secret breast:
And thrice I've view'd the vernal gleam,
Since oft mine eye, with Joy's electric beam,
Illum'd it -- and its sadder hue
Oft moisten'd with the Tear's ambrosial dew!
Poor wither'd floweret! on its head
Has dark Despair his sickly mildew shed!
But thou, O Fortune! canst relume
Its deaden'd tints -- and thou with hardier bloom
May'st haply tinge its beauties pale,
And yield the unsunn'd stranger to the western gale!



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