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Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives by Henry Francis Cary
page 88 of 337 (26%)
"O! 'tis too much (he said); too soon to part,
Ere well we meet! But this new flood of day
O'erpowers me, and I feel a death-like damp
Chill all my frame, and stop my faltering tongue."
Now Lydia, so they call'd his gentle friend,
Who, with averted eye, but in her soul
Had felt the lancing steel, her aid applied,
"And stay, dear youth (she said), or with thee take
Thy Lydia, thine alike in life or death!"
At Lydia's name, at Lydia's well known voice,
He strove again to raise his drooping head
And ope his closing eye, but strove in vain,
And on her trembling bosom sunk away.
Now other fears distract his weeping friends:
But short their grief! for soon his life return'd,
And, with return of life, return'd their peace.--(B. iii.)

The country which he has undertaken to describe in this poem is fertile
and tame. There was little left to him, except to enlarge on its
antiquities, to speak of the habitations that were scattered over it,
and to compliment the most distinguished among their possessors. Every
day must detract something from the interest, such as it is, that arises
from these sources. A poet should take care not to make the fund of his
reputation liable to be affected by dilapidations, or to be passed away
by the hands of a conveyancer.

It would seem as if he had never visited a tract of land much wilder
than that in which he was bred and born. In speaking of "embattled
walls, raised on the mountain precipice," he particularises "Beaudesert;
Old Montfort's seat;"[2]--a place, which, though it is pleasantly
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