But to see her was to love her, Love but her, and love forever. Had we never lou’d sae kindly, Had we never lou’d sae blindly, Never met – or never parted – We had ne’er been broken hearted.
When Nature her great masterpiece designed,And framed her last, best work, the human mind,Her eye intent on all the wondrous plan,She formed of various stuff the various Man.
Some rhyme a neebor’s name to lash; Some rhyme (vain thought!) for needfu’ cash; Some rhyme to court the countra clash, An’ raise a din; For me, an aim I never fash; I rhyme for fun.
Your lines, I maintain it, are poetry, and good poetry. Friendship had I been so blest as to have met with you in time, might have led me – God of love only knows where.
God help the teacher, if a man of sensibility and genius, when a booby father presents him with his booby son, and insists on lighting up the rays of science in a fellow’s head whose skull is impervious and inaccessible by any other way than a positive fracture with a cudgel.
