Love did not begin at first sight.  Sylvius played with Amasia when they both were children, and neither thought of love.  Later on, in early youth, the poet was devoted only to a male friend, one Martin.  To him ecstatic verses are inscribed: 

  O Martin!  Martin! let the grateful sound
  Reach to that Heav’n which has our Friendship crown’d,
  And, like our endless Friendship, meet no bound.

But alas! one day Martin came back, after a long absence, and, although he still

  With generous, kind, continu’d Friendship burn’d,

he found Sylvius entirely absorbed by Amasia.  Martin knew better than to show temper; he accepted the situation, and

      the lov’d Amasia’s Health flew round,
  Amasia’s Health the Golden Goblets crown’d.

Now began the first and happiest portion of the story.  Amasia had no suspicion of the feelings of the poet, and he was only too happy to be permitted to watch her movements.  He records, in successive copies of verses, the various things she did.  He seems to have been on terms of delightful intimacy with the lady, and he calls all sorts of people of the highest position to witness how he suffered.  To Lady Sandwich are dedicated poems on “Amasia, drawing her own Picture,” on “Amasia, playing with a Clouded Fan,” on “Amasia, singing, and sticking pins in a Red Silk Pincushion.”  We are told how Amasia “looked at me through a Multiplying-Glass,” how she was troubled with a redness in her eyes, how she danced before a looking-glass, how her flowered muslin nightgown (or “night-rail,” as he calls it) took fire, and how, though she promised to sing, yet she never performed.  We have a poem on the circumstance that Amasia, “having prick’d me with a Pin, accidentally scratched herself with it;” and another on her “asking me if I slept well after so tempestuous a night.”  But perhaps the most intimate of all is a poem “To Amasia, tickling a Gentleman.”  It was no perfunctory tickling that Amasia administered: 

While round his sides your nimble Fingers played, With pleasing softness did they swiftly rove, While, at each touch, they made his Heart-strings move.  As round his Breast, his ravish’d Breast they crowd, We hear their Musick when he laughs aloud.

This is probably the only instance in literature in which a gentleman has complacently celebrated in verse the fact that his lady-love has tickled some other gentleman.

But this generous simplicity was not long to last.  In 1690 Hopkins’s father, the Bishop, had died.  We may conjecture that Lady Araminta took charge of the boy, and that his home, in vacation time, was with her in Dublin or London.  He writes like a youth who has always been petted; the frou-frou of fine ladies’ petticoats is heard in all his verses.  But he had no fortune and no prospects; he was utterly, he confesses, without ambition.  The stern papa of Amasia had no notion of bestowing