From whence I first drew air, and first beheld
This happy light; when answer none returned,
On a green shady bank, profuse of flowers,
Pensive I sate me down, there gentle sleep
First found me, and with soft oppression seized
My drowned sense, untroubled, though I thought
I then was passing to my former state,
Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve.[125]
But now I can't forgive this odious thing, this Dryden, who, in his "State of Innocence," has given my great-grand-mother Eve the same apprehension of annihilation, on a very different occasion, as Adam pronounces it of himself, when he was seized with a pleasing kind of stupor and deadness, Eve fancies herself falling away, and dissolving in the hurry of a rapture. However, the verses are very good, and I don't know but it may be natural what she says. I'll read them:
When your kind eyes looked languishing on mine,