Religious, social, of all kinds, That tear and agitate their minds. A thousand thoughts within me stirred, Of which I could not speak a word; Strange efforts after something new, Which I was wretched not to do; Passions, ambitions lay and lurked, Wants, counter-wants, obscurely worked Without their names, and unexplained. And where had Emily obtained Assurance, and had ascertained? How strange, how far behind was I, And how it came, I asked, and why? How was it, and how could it be, And what was all that worked in me? They used to scold me when I read, And bade me talk to them instead; When I absconded to my room, To fetch me out they used to come; Oft by myself I went to walk, But, by degrees, was got to talk. The year had cheerfully begun, With more than winter’s wonted sun, Mountains, in the green garden ways, Gleamed through the laurel and the bays. I well remember letting out One day, as there I looked about, While they of girls discoursing sat, This one how sweet, how lovely that, That I could greater pleasure take In looking on Llynidwil lake Than on the fairest female face: They could not understand: a place! Incomprehensible it seemed; Philippa looked as if she dreamed, Patty and Lydia loud exclaimed, And I already was ashamed, When Emily asked, half apart, If to the lake I’d given my heart; And did the lake, she wished to learn, My tender sentiment return. For music, too, I would not care, Which was an infinite despair: When Lydia took her seat to play, I read a book, or walked away. I was not quite composed, I own, Except when with the girls alone; Looked to their father still with fear Of how to him I must appear; And was entirely put to shame, When once some rough he-cousins came. Yet Emily from all distress Could reinstate me, more or less; How pleasant by her side to walk, How beautiful to let her talk, How charming; yet, by slow degrees, I got impatient, ill at ease; Half glad, half wretched, when at last The visit ended, and ’twas past. III