To see thee, to love thee, ay, love thee to madness,
To know that thou ne'er couldst be aught to me!
To leave thee! and read in my spirit's lone sadness,
That the love was all hopeless I centred in thee!

The muse appears at this junction to have
been quite troublesome with her declarations.
The following was written one evening
instead of going to dinner like a Christian
gentleman to Uncle Sampson's on Christmas
Day. It stands entitled, I Love Thee! and
is written with a neatness that says little for
its spontaneity:—

I love thee! O, never did summer sea
Greet sunshine more gladly than I greet thee!
Like dew to spring flowers, like stars to dusk night
Art thou with thy glances of liquid light!

I love thee, as only those hearts can love
Whose burning devotion is hard to move!
Life, beauty, and hope, thou art all to me, —
A voice and an echo of melody!"

It seems rather as if sense were made subordinate
to sound in some of these lucubrations,
but they are not so bad for seventeen. Davie
came back to Milverston for a little while at
this season, and cultivated his grief, to the
great disorder of our regular household. One
night he stayed out so late that my father
went in search of him and found him by the
mere, seeking inspiration from the stars. On
this occasion he produced eight more lines,
which seem to have been the utmost his
muse could bring for that one time. It
is called, in the vellum book into which it
is carefully transcribed, Tell me, my
Heart:—

Tell me, my heart, the reason of thy sadness,
Why peoplest thou thy solitude with dreams?
Why dost thou shun the scenes of mirth and gladness
To find thy echo in the lonely streams?

Alas! my heart, that thy poor love should wander,
Where it can meet with nought but cold disdain!
Sad that its treasures thus my soul should squander
Where it can reap but tears and griefs again!"

Good little Lucy would have been sorry,
indeed, if she could have known into what
a limbo of anguish Davie was thrown by her
marriage; but let us hope, as she might have
done, that the best half of the tortures were
only fancy. I know he had at the worst an
excellent appetite for lamb and asparagus, to
which he was very partial. Dear Davie, to
read these effusions, tender imaginations may
think of him as fine porcelain fractured with
the world's hard usage, whereas he is stout
and bald, and wears green spectacles. The
law does not undertake to deal with poetry
composed under false pretences, or many
would be the sighing Strephons and doleful
Delias brought up for judgment.

Last summer we had Davie at home for a
month, and during that time occurred the
grand incremation of Bernardo Caspiato. I
shall ever regard it as a most cruel sacrifice, and
Cousin Jack, who instigated it, as an illiterate
character. Davie brought it forth one evening
when we three were together, and read
parts of it aloud: Jack unfeelingly remarked
that it was not like good wine, it did not
improve with keeping; that, like fruit plucked
immaturely, it was green and tasteless; it had
not acquired mellowness and flavor, and if
stored up for another twenty years it would
not taste better. Davie half coincided with
him; but I did not; so grandly majestic as
was the march of the lines, so delicate and
true the rhymes, so thrilling the noble
catastrophe. It exasperated me to see Jack,
first yawn to the full extent of his jaws, then
snatch the manuscript from Davie, and toss
it up to the ceiling, retreating afterwards in
feigned fear lest he should be crushed by its
leaden fall. An ignoble fate was thine, —
immortal Bernardo! Convicted of the
respectable sin of dulness— which none pardon
— thou wert condemned to be burnt!
Davie did not act with undue precipitation;
Jack urged an immediate execution, but the
poet took a week to consider of it, and many
a pang it cost him. Those who have written
immortal poems and destroyed them will
appreciate his feelings; none else can. Let
anybody of experience call to mind the last
time he has read through the letters from his
first love, just before she was married to
somebody else; or the letters from that
particular old friend, which it is of no use to
keep because he is dead, or you have
quarrelled beyond hope of reconciliation, and
then some faint idea will be conceived of the
poet's sensations at this immolation of his
first love, his particular friend, and his pet
child— all in one.

It was the summer-season, and warm,— I
found it very warm; there was no fire in the
grate, and the match-box on the writing-table
was empty. Jack supplied the want eagerly
from his smoking apparatus, and Bernardo
Caspiato shrank into a pinch of tinder. I wept.

"There! " said poor Davie, with a
profound sigh, " it took two years to write and
two seconds to destroy— just like an eternal
friendship, an undying affection, or anything
of that kind which half a dozen indiscreet
words are at any time enough to annihilate!"

"Have a cigar, old boy; never mind
moralising," said Jack, to wham a cigar
would be consolation for the death of his
grandmother; " have a cigar; the business
can't be helped."

"Poor Bernardo! " said Davie, as feelingly
as if he spoke of a brother, " poor Bernardo!
He gave me many an hour's delightful
occupation. I feel as if I had lost a friend to
whom I had been in the habit of confiding my
sentimental vagaries. I'm not sure that it
was right to burn him."

"Have a cigar," reiterated Cousin Jack.
Davie accepted the offer with a pensive sigh,
put on his green spectacles, and went out for a
walk in mournful mood. It is a serious thing