It died an easy death, and calmly sank to rest. To either sex is the delusion lent; 360} And, when it fails us, we should rest content; } ’Tis cruel to reproach, when bootless to repent. } _E._ Then wise the lovers who consent to wait, And always lingering, never try the state; But hurried on, by what they call their pain And I their bliss, no longer they refrain; To ease that pain, to lose that bliss, they run To the church magi, and the thing is done; A spell is utter’d, and a ring applied, And forth they walk a bridegroom and a bride, 370 To find this counter-charm, this marriage rite, Has put their pleasant fallacies to flight! But tell me, Henry, should we truly strive, May we not bid the happy dream revive? _H._ Alas! they say when weakness or when vice Expels a foolish pair from Paradise, The guardian power to prayer has no regard; The knowledge once obtain’d, the gate is barr’d; Or, could we enter, we should still repine, Unless we could the knowledge too resign.— 380 Yet let us calmly view our present fate, And make a humbler Eden of our state; With this advantage, that what now we gain, Experience gives, and prudence will retain. _E._ Ah! much I doubt—when you in fury broke That lovely vase by one impassion’d stroke, And thousand china-fragments met my sight, Till rising anger put my grief to flight: As well might you the beauteous jar repiece, As joy renew and bid vexation cease. 390 _H._ Why then ’tis wisdom, Emma, not to keep These griefs in memory; they had better sleep. There was a time when this heaven-guarded isle, Whose valleys flourish—nay, whose mountains smile— Was steril, wild, deform’d, and beings rude Creatures scarce wilder than themselves pursued. The sea was heard around a waste to howl; The night-wolf answer’d to the whooting owl; And all was wretched—Yet who now surveys The land, withholds his wonder and his praise? 400 Come, let us try and make our moral view Improve like this—this have we power to do. _E._ O! I’ll be all forgetful, deaf and dumb, And all you wish, to have these changes come. _H._ And come they may; if not as heretofore, We cannot all the lovely vase restore; What we beheld in Love’s perspective glass Has pass’d away—one sigh! and let it pass. It was a blissful vision, and it fled, And we must get some actual good instead: 410 Of good and evil that we daily find, _That_ we must hoard, _this_ banish from the mind; The food of Love, that food on which he thrives, To find must be the business of our lives; And when we know what Love delights to see, We must his guardians and providers be. As careful peasants, with incessant toil, Bring earth to vines in bare and rocky soil, And, as they raise with care each scanty heap, Think of the purple clusters they shall reap: 420 So those accretions to the mind we’ll bring,