“We sate and listened to some measure soft From many instruments; or faint and lone (Touch’d by his gentle hand or by my own) The little lute its chorded notes would send, Tender and clear; and with our voices blend Cadence so true, that when the breeze swept by _One mingled echo floated on its sigh!_ And still as day by day we saw depart, _I_ was the living idol of his heart: How to make joy a portion of the air That breathed around me seemed his only care. For me the harp was strung, the page was turned; For me the morning rose, the sunset burn’d; For me the Spring put on her verdant suit; For me the Summer flowers, the Autumn fruit; The very world seemed mine, _so mighty strove_ _For my contentment that enduring love._” But the slumbers of the dear girl are at length broken, she discovers that it is _but a dream_, and thus repines over the contrast. “Is all that radiance past—gone by for ever— And must there in its stead for ever be The gray, sad sky, the cold and clouded river, And dismal dwelling by the wintry sea? Ere half a summer altering day by day, In fickle brightness, here, hath passed away! And was that form (whose love might well sustain) Naught but a vapor of the dreaming brain? Would I had slept forever.” The “mournful mother” now speaks. And how sweetly come from her lips the lessons of piety and resignation. She gently rebukes her daughter, contrasts the world which fancy paints with the stern realities of existence, and distils into the opening mind of the child the wisdom which her own sad experience had taught. “Upbraid not Heaven, whose wisdom thus would rule A world whose changes are the soul’s best school: All dream like thee and ’tis for mercy’s sake That those who dream the wildest soonest wake; All deem Perfection’s system would be found In giving earthly sense no stint or bound; All look for happiness beneath the sun, And each expects what God hath given to _none_.” It is in this part of the argument that we discover the fervor, strength, and pathos that the lessons of experience impart. It is here that Mrs. Norton teaches in song what she has herself learnt in suffering. If the following is not poetry it is something that moistens the eye very much like it.