through thee, my Eva, my sweet wife. Then what was Man's lost Paradise? how rife Of bliss, since love is with him in his fall! Such as our own pure passion still might frame Of this fair earth and its delightful bowers, If no fell sorrow, like the serpent, came To trail its venom o'er the sweetest flowers; But, O! as many and such tears are ours As only should be shed for guilt and shame. 

SONNET.

Though I inherit in this feverish life

Of worldly toil, vain wishes, and hard strife,

I taste through thee, my Eva, my sweet wife.

Then what was Man's lost Paradise? how rife

Such as our own pure passion still might frame

If no fell sorrow, like the serpent, came

As only should be shed for guilt and shame.

In Hood, as in all true wits, the smile lightens on the verge of a tear. True wit and humor show that exquisite sensibility to the relations of life, that fine perception as to slight tokens of its fearful, hopeless mysteries, which imply pathos to a still higher degree than mirth.

Hood knew and welcomed the dower which nature gave him at his birth, when he wrote thus:—

 All things are touched with melancholy Born of the secret soul's mistrust, To feel her fair ethereal wings Weighed down with vile, degraded dust. Even the bright extremes of joy Bring on conclusions of disgust, Like the sweet blossoms of the May, Whose fragrance ends in must. O, give her, then, her tribute just, Her sighs and tears and musings holy; There is no music in the life That sounds with idiot laughter solely; There's not a string attuned to mirth, But has its chord in melancholy. 

Born of the secret soul's mistrust,

Weighed down with vile, degraded dust.

Bring on conclusions of disgust,

Whose fragrance ends in must.

 Prev. P 44/303 next