I love thee! O, never did summer sea Greet sunshine more gladly than I greet thee! Like dew to spring flowers, like stars to dusk night Art thou with thy glances of liquid light! I love thee, as only those hearts can love Whose burning devotion is hard to move! Life, beauty, and hope, thou art all to me,-- A voice and an echo of melody! It seems rather as if sense were made subordinate to sound in some of these lucubrations, but they are not so bad for seventeen. Davie came back to Milverston for a little while at this season, and cultivated his grief, to the great disorder of our regular household. One night he stayed out so late that my father went in search of him and found him by the mere, seeking inspiration from the stars. On this occasion he produced eight more lines, which seem to have been the utmost his muse could bring for that one time. It is called, in the vellum book into which it is carefully transcribed, Tell me, my Heart:-- Tell me, my heart, the reason of thy sadness, Why peoplest thou thy solitude with dreams? Why dost thou shun the scenes of mirth and gladness To find thy echo in the lonely streams? Alas! my heart, that thy poor love should wander, Where it can meet with nought but cold disdain! Sad that its treasures thus my soul should squander Where it can reap but tears and griefs again! Good little Lucy would have been sorry, indeed, if she could have known into what a limbo of anguish Davie was thrown by her marriage; but let us hope, as she might have done, that the best half of the tortures were only fancy. I know he had at the worst an excellent appetite for lamb and asparagus, to which he was very partial. Dear Davie, to read these effusions, tender imaginations may think of him as fine porcelain fractured with the world’s hard usage, whereas he is stout and bald, and wears green spectacles. The law does not undertake to deal with poetry composed under false pretences, or many would be the sighing Strephons and doleful Delias brought up for judgment.