Trickles down the gray rock as the tears of Croneroe.
V.
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:—
I.
Refinement’s a very nice thing in its way,