"
An early, innocent, and unfortunate passion, however fruitful of pain
it may be to the man, is a lasting advantage to the poet. It is a well
of sweet and bitter fancies; of refined and gentle sentiments; of
elevated and ennobling thoughts; shut up in the deep recesses of the
heart, keeping it green amidst the withering blights of the world, and,
by its casual gushings and overflowings, recalling at times all the
freshness, and innocence, and enthusiasm of youthful days. Lord Byron
was conscious of this effect, and purposely cherished and brooded over
the remembrance of his early passion, and of all the scenes of Annesley
Hall connected with it. It was this remembrance that attuned his mind
to some of its most elevated and virtuous strains, and shed an
inexpressible grace and pathos over his best productions.
Being thus put upon the traces of this little love-story, I cannot
refrain from threading them out, as they appear from time to time in
various passages of Lord Byron's works. During his subsequent rambles
in the East, when time and distance had softened away his "early
romance" almost into the remembrance of a pleasing and tender dream, he
received accounts of the object of it, which represented her, still in
her paternal Hall, among her native bowers of Annesley, surrounded by a
blooming and beautiful family, yet a prey to secret and withering
melancholy--
----"In her home,
A thousand leagues from his,--her native home,
She dwelt, begirt with growing infancy,
Daughters and sons of beauty, but--behold!
Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
_As if its lids were charged with unshed tears_.
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