How changed thou art! how pallid, chill, and drear!
Give me that voice again, my Porphyro,
Those looks immortal, those complainings dear!
O leave me not in this eternal woe,
For if thou diest, my love, I know not where to go.”
If you have ever been young, and heard, for the first time, the blushing confession of her you loved in doubt and danger, you can form some conception of the bewildering joy which seized Porphyro at this. Egad! sir, I would give ten years of my life—old as I am—to enjoy such rapture. But no tongue except that of the poet can even shadow forth his ecstacy. Ah! to be loved is bliss, but to be loved by a Madeline—!
“Beyond a mortal man impassioned far
At these voluptuous accents, he arose,
Ethereal, flush’d, and like a throbbing star
Seen ’mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose;