“And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry— Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun.”—BURNS. In such hyperbolic effusions a lover sees no exaggeration, for they describe his feelings and convictions precisely as they are. “What we mortals call romantic, And always envy though we deem it frantic” (BYRON) is to him bare reality, nothing more. Romeo expresses his real wish for the moment when he says— “O that I were a glove upon that hand That I might touch that cheek;” Byron really feels that “O, if the streets were paved with thine eyes Her feet were much too dainty for such tread.” And every lover would agree with Coleridge that “Her very frowns are fairer far Than smiles of other maidens are.” “The air I breathe in a room empty of you is unhealthy,” wrote Keats to his sweetheart; and Burns, in the sketch of his first love, thus describes the emotional hyperæsthesia produced by Love: “I didn’t know myself why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an Æolian harp, and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious rattan when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles.” This is the true ecstasy of Love—the most delicious and thrilling emotion of which the human soul is capable. Nor is it necessary to be a poet to feel it. While in Love even a coarser-grained man “feels the blood of the violet, the clover, and the lily in his veins” (Emerson). But if Jealousy rouses him, it is flower-blood no longer that courses in his veins, nor human blood, but vengeful Spanish wine. It is then that Love’s intoxication reaches its climax: delirious ecstasy followed by angry waves of dire despair, rocking and tossing the unhappy victim till he is pale and sick as death. Like other drunkards, the Love-intoxicated youth sees and feels everything double. His darling seems doubly beautiful, and all his joys and sorrows are doubled in intensity. And, like other drunkards, he imagines that all the world is drunk and reeling; whereas the rapid oscillation of surrounding objects between the rosy hue of hope and the gray cloud of doubt, is all in his own mind. How this erotic intoxication multiplies the lover’s courage and confidence in his success! The most insignificant smile raises him over all obstacles to the summit of his hopes, as easily as a cloud-shadow climbs a mountain side o’er treetops, rocks, and snowy walls. How, on her part, it magnifies his heroism, his genius, converting the most insipid commonplace into an immortal epigram, full of wit and wisdom!