Thus when the angry heavens transform To frowns their cheerful smiles, When the dread thunder's voice a storm To trembling swains foretells, If but a humble cottage nigh Presents its peaceful shade, We scorn the furies of the sky, And court its friendly aid. TO A LADY, _Suspecting that the friendship of men to her sex always concealed a more dangerous passion._ Hang, my lyre, upon the willow, Sigh to winds thy notes forlorn, Or along the foaming billow, Float the wrecking tempest's scorn. Airs no more thy warbling raises, Such as Laura deigns approve; Laura scorns her poet's praises, Artless friendship calls it love. Impious love, that, spurning duty, Spurning nature's chastest ties, Mocks thy tears, dejected beauty, Sports with fallen virtue's sighs. Call it love no more, profaning Truth with dark suspicion's wound; Or, if still the term retaining, Change the sense, preserve the sound. Yes, 'tis love, that name is given, Angels, to your purest flames; Such a love as merits Heaven, Heaven's divinest image claims. LAURA'S ANSWER. Soon be thy lyre to winds consign'd. Or hurl'd beneath the raging deep; For while such strains seduce my mind, How shall my heart its purpose keep. Thy artless lays, which artless seem, With too much fondness I approve; Oh write no more in such a theme, Or Laura's friendship ends in love. The question, whether the man concerning whom a biographical work is written was ever in love, is an important feature in his history, if any light can be thrown upon it. Perhaps some readers will hold, that the tameness of these verses show that, at all events, when he wrote _them_, Hume was under the impulse of no passion. Very little more light can be brought to bear on this subject; and what can be obtained, is of a like faint and negative cast. He tells us in his "own life," "As I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them." In his essays he frequently discusses the passion of love, dividing it into its elements about as systematically as if he had subjected it to a chemical analysis, and laying down rules regarding it as distinctly and specifically as if it were a system of logic. Nor do the references in his correspondence to any individuals of the other sex, show any perceptible warmth of sentiment. In a letter to Henry Home, of which the other portions are printed above,[232:1] he speaks with perhaps as much appearance of sentiment as any where else, when he says,--