Seeing I sat not at Thy council-board?
One argument at least doth hearten me
To hope those prayers may not unanswered be,
Which reason and pure thoughts to me afford:
Since often, if not always, Thou dost will
In Thy deep wisdom, Lord,
Best laboured soil with fairest fruits to fill.

IX.

The tilth of this my field by plough and hoe
Yields me good hope--but more the fostering sun
Of Sense divine that quickens me within,
Whose rays those many minor stars outshone--
That it is destined in high heaven to show
Mercy, and grant my prayer; so I may win
The end Thy gifts betoken, enter in
The realm reserved for me from earliest time.
Christ prayed but 'If it may be,' knowing well
He might not shun that cup so terrible:
His angel answered, that the law sublime
Ordained his death. I prayed not thus, and mine--
Was mine then sent from Hell?--
Made answer diverse from that voice divine.

X.

Go song, go tell my Lord--'Lo! he who lies
Tortured in chains within a pit for Thee,
Cries, how can flight be free
Wingless?--Send Thy word down, or Thou
Show that fate's wheel turns not iniquity,
And that in heaven there is no lip that lies.'--
Yet, song, too boldly flies
Thy shaft; stay yet for this that follows now!

APPENDIX II.

The 'Rivista Europea' of June 1875 publishes an article by Signor V. de
Tivoli concerning an inedited sonnet of Michael Angelo, which he
deciphered from the Autograph, written upon the back of one of the
original drawings in the Taylor Gallery at Oxford. This drawing formed
part of the Ottley and Lawrence Collection. It represents horses in
various attitudes, together with a skirmish between a mounted soldier
and a group of men on foot. Signor de Tivoli not only prints the text
with all its orthographical confusions, abbreviations, and alterations;
but he also adds what he modestly terms a restoration of the sonnet. Of
this restoration I have made the subjoined version in rhyme, though I
frankly admit that the difficulties of the text, as given in the rough
by Signor de Tivoli, seem to me insuperable, and that his readings,
though ingenious, cannot in my opinion be accepted as absolutely
certain. He himself describes the MS. as a palimpsest, deliberately
defaced by Michael Angelo, from which the words originally written have
to be recovered in many cases by a process of conject