Then return, sylvan maid, and the flowers will all spring,
And the wood-dove will coo, and the linnet will sing—
The gold-fish will sparkle, the silver streams flow,
And the noon ray shine bright thro’ the glen of Croneroe.
Nothing very interesting occurred for above two months to our amorous
lyrist, when he began to tire of waiting for the nymph of Croneroe, and
grew fond of one of his own cousins without being able to give any very
particular reason for it, further than that he was becoming more and
more enlightened in the ways of the world. But this family flame soon
burnt itself out; and he next fell into a sort of furious passion for a
fine, strong, ruddy, country girl, the parson’s daughter: she was a
capital housekeeper, and the parson himself a jolly hunting fellow: at
his house there was a _good table_, and a hearty style of joking,—which
advantages, together with a walk in the shrubbery, a sillabub under the
cow, and a romp in the hay-making field, soon sent poor refinement about
its business. The poet became absolutely _mortal_, and began to write
common hexameters. However, before he was confirmed in his mortality, he
happened one day to mention a _sylph_ to his new sweetheart; she merely
replied that she _never saw one_, and asked her mamma privately what it
was, who desired her never to mention _such a word_ again.
But by the time he set out for Oxford he had got tolerably well quit of
all his ethereal visions, celestials, and snow-drops: and to convince
his love what an admiration he had for sensible, _substantial_ beauty,
like hers, he wrote the following lines in a blank leaf of her
prayer-book, which she had left in his way, as if suspecting his
intention:—