Tant s'en faut que je sois alors maistre de moy,
Que je ni'rois les Dieux, et trahirois mon Roy,
Je vendrois mon pay, je meurtrirois mon pere;
Telle rage me tient après que j'ay tasté
A longs traits amoureux de la poison amère
Qui sort de ces beaux yeux dont je suis enchanté.
Mercy on us! neither Petrarch, nor poor Abel Shufflebottom himself was so far gone as this!
In a diseased heart it loses its nature, and combining with the morbid affection which it finds produces a new disease.
When it gets into an empty heart, it works there like quicksilver in an apple dumpling, while the astonished cook ignorant of the roguery which has been played her, thinks that there is not Death, but the Devil in the pot.
In a full heart, which is tantamount to saying a virtuous one, (for in every other, conscience keeps a void place for itself, and the hollow is always felt;) it is sedative, sanative, and preservative: a drop of the true elixir, no mithridate so effectual against the infection of vice.
How then did this passion act upon Leonard and Margaret? In a manner which you will not find described in any of Mr. Thomas Moore's poems; and which Lord Byron is as incapable of understanding, or even believing in another, as he is of feeling it in himself.
CHAPTER LXXVII.
MORE CONCERNING LOVE AND THE DREAM OF LIFE.