beauties; in silent groves and grottoes, dark alcoves, and lonely
recesses, all its formalities are laid aside; it was then and there
methought my _Sylvia_ yielded, with a faint struggle and a soft
resistance; I heard her broken sighs, her tender whispering voice,
that trembling cried,--'Oh! Can you be so cruel?--Have you the
heart--Will you undo a maid, because she loves you? Oh! Will you ruin
me, because you may?----My faithless----My unkind----' then sighed and
yielded, and made me happier than a triumphing god! But this was still
a dream, I waked and sighed, and found it vanished all! But oh, my
_Sylvia_, your letters were substantial pleasure, and pardon your
adorer, if he tell you, even the disorder you express is infinitely
dear to him, since he knows it all the effects of love; love, my soul!
Which you in vain oppose; pursue it, dear, and call it not undoing, or
else explain your fear, and tell me what your soft, your trembling
heart gives that cruel title to? Is it undoing to love? And love the
man you say has youth and beauty to justify that love? A man, that
adores you with so submissive and perfect a resignation; a man, that
did not only love first, but is resolved to die in that agreeable
flame; in my creation I was formed for love, and destined for my
_Sylvia_, and she for her _Philander_: and shall we, can we disappoint
our fate? No, my soft charmer, our souls were touched with the same
shafts of love before they had a being in our bodies, and can we
contradict divine decree?

Or is it undoing, dear, to bless _Philander_ with what you must some
time or other sacrifice to some hated, loathed object, (for _Sylvia_
can never love again;) and are those treasures for the dull conjugal
lover to rifle? Was the beauty of divine shape created for the cold
matrimonial embrace? And shall the eternal joys that _Sylvia_ can
dispense, be returned by the clumsy husband's careless, forced,