The lingering lay that feeds my woes,
Ere yet forgotten Della Crusca runs
To torrid gales or petrifying suns,
Ere, bowed to earth, my latest feeling flies,
And the big passion settles on my eyes;
Oh, may this sacred sentiment be known,
That my adoring heart is Anna's own!
Such is the immortality of poetic attachments—
For ever wilt thou love and she be fair.
That the poet was shortly afterward “married to another,” is sufficient to explain the cessation of the correspondence, from which Gifford argues that the interview resulted in aversion. And he might further have reflected that when a poet is reduced to talk of “petrifying suns” his correspondence has been known to cease for lack of ideas.