While poverty, with unrelenting force,
Will your own offspring from your love divorce;
They, through your folly, must be doom’d to pine,
And you deplore your passion, or resign;
For if it die, what good will then remain? 
And if it live, it doubles every pain.’”
   “But you were true,” exclaim’d the Lass,” and fled
The tyrant’s power who fill’d your soul with dread?”
“But,” said the smiling Friend, “he fill’d my mouth with bread: 
And in what other place that bread to gain
We long consider’d, and we sought in vain: 
This was my twentieth year,—­at thirty-five
Our hope was fainter, yet our love alive;
So many years in anxious doubt had pass’d.” 
“Then,” said the Damsel, “you were bless’d at last?”
A smile again adorn’d the Widow’s face,
But soon a starting tear usurp’d its place. 
   “Slow pass’d the heavy years, and each had more
Pains and vexations than the years before. 
My father fail’d; his family was rent,
And to new states his grieving daughters sent: 
Each to more thriving kindred found a way,
Guests without welcome,—­servants without pay;
Our parting hour was grievous; still I feel
The sad, sweet converse at our final meal;
Our father then reveal’d his former fears,
Cause of his sternness, and then join’d our tears: 
Kindly he strove our feelings to repress,
But died, and left us heirs to his distress. 
The rich, as humble friends, my sisters chose;
I with a wealthy widow sought repose;
Who with a chilling frown her friend received,
Bade me rejoice, and wonder’d that I grieved: 
In vain my anxious lover tried his skill,
To rise in life, he was dependent still: 
We met in grief, nor can I paint the fears
Of these unhappy, troubled, trying years: 
Our dying hopes and stronger fears between,
We felt no season peaceful or serene;
Our fleeting joys, like meteors in the night,
Shone on our gloom with inauspicious light;
And then domestic sorrows, till the mind,
Worn with distresses, to despair inclined;
Add too the ill that from the passion flows,
When its contemptuous frown the world bestows,
The peevish spirit caused by long delay,
When, being gloomy, we contemn the gay,
When, being wretched, we incline to hate
And censure others in a happier state;
Yet loving still, and still compell’d to move
In the sad labyrinth of lingering love: 
While you, exempt from want, despair, alarm,
May wed—­oh! take the Farmer and the Farm.” 
   “Nay,” said the nymph, “joy smiled on you at last?”
“Smiled for a moment,” she replied, “and pass’d: 
My lover still the same dull means pursued,
Assistant call’d, but kept in servitude;
His spirits wearied in the prime of life,
By fears and wishes in eternal strife;
At length he urged impatient—­’Now consent;
With thee united, Fortune may relent.’ 
I paused, consenting; but a Friend arose,