There - but ’tis folly - I request to lie.”
“Thus,” said the lass, “to joy you bade adieu!
But how a widow? - that cannot be true:
Or was it force, in some unhappy hour,
That placed you, grieving, in a tyrant’s power?”
“Force, my young friend, when forty years are fled,
Is what a woman seldom has to dread;
She needs no brazen locks nor guarding walls,
And seldom comes a lover though she calls:
Yet, moved by fancy, one approved my face,