Waller, who had professed that his hope Should ne'er rise higher Than for a pardon that he dared admire, pressed forward with his congratulations in verse and prose, and wrote the following letter, full of pleasant imprecations, to Lady Lucy Sydney, the younger sister of Sacharissa. It will be allowed that it argues more wit and good nature than love or sorrow; and that he was resolved that the willow should sit as gracefully and lightly on his brow, as the myrtle or the bays. "To my Lady Lucy Sydney, on the marriage of my Lady Dorothea, her Sister. "MADAM.--In this common joy, at Penshurst, I know none to whom complaints may come less unseasonable than to your Ladyship,--the loss of a bedfellow being almost equal to that of a mistress; and therefore you ought, at least, to pardon, if you consent not to the imprecations of the deserted, which just Heaven, no doubt, will hear. "May my Lady Dorothea, if we may yet call her so, suffer as much, and have the like passion, for this young Lord, whom she has preferred to the rest of mankind, as others have had for her; and may this love, before the year come about, make her taste of the first curse imposed on womankind--the pains of becoming a mother. May her first-born be none of her own sex, nor so like her, but that he may resemble her Lord as much as herself. "May she, that always affected silence and retiredness, have the house filled with the noise and number of her children, and hereafter of her grand-children, and then may she arrive at that great curse, so much declined by fair ladies,--_old age_. May she live to be very old, and yet seem young--be told so by her glass--and have no aches to inform her of the truth: and when she shall appear to be mortal, may her Lord not mourn for her, but go hand-in-hand with her to that place, where, we are told, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, that being there divorced, we may all have an equal interest in her again. My revenge being immortal, I wish that all this may also befall their posterity to the world's end and afterwards. "To you, Madam, I wish all good things, and that this loss may, in good time, be happily supplied with a more constant bedfellow of the other sex. "Madam, I humbly kiss your hands, and beg pardon for this trouble from your Ladyship's most humble Servant, E. WALLER."