Feeding, unfill’d; destroying, undestroy’d;
It craves for ever, and is ever void:  —
Wretch that I am! what misery have I found,
Since my sure craft was to thy calling bound!”
   “Oh! vaunt of worthless art,” the swain replied,
Scowling contempt, “how pitiful this pride! 
What are these specious gifts, these paltry gains,
But base rewards for ignominious pains? 
With all thy tricking, still for bread we strive,
Thine is, proud wretch! the care that cannot thrive;
By all thy boasted skill and baffled hooks,
Thou gain’st no more than students by their books. 
No more than I for my poor deeds am paid,
Whom none can blame, will help, or dare upbraid. 
   “Call this our need, a bog that all devours, —
Then what thy petty arts, but summer-flowers,
Gaudy and mean, and serving to betray
The place they make unprofitably gay? 
Who know it not, some useless beauties see, —
But ah! to prove it was reserved for me.” 
   Unhappy state! that, in decay of love,
Permits harsh truth his errors to disprove;
While he remains, to wrangle and to jar,
Is friendly tournament, not fatal war;
Love in his play will borrow arms of hate,
Anger and rage, upbraiding and debate;
And by his power the desperate weapons thrown,
Become as safe and pleasant as his own;
But left by him, their natures they assume,
And fatal, in their poisoning force, become. 
   Time fled, and now the swain compell’d to see
New cause for fear—­“Is this thy thrift?” quoth he,
To whom the wife with cheerful voice replied:  —
“Thou moody man, lay all thy fears aside;
I’ve seen a vision—­they, from whom I came,
A daughter promise, promise wealth and fame;
Born with my features, with my arts, yet she
Shall patient, pliant, persevering be,
And in thy better ways resemble thee. 
The fairies round shall at her birth attend,
The friend of all in all shall find a friend,
And save that one sad star that hour must gleam
On our fair child, how glorious were my dream?”
   This heard the husband, and, in surly smile,
Aim’d at contempt, but yet he hoped the while;
For as, when sinking, wretched men are found
To catch at rushes rather than be drown’d;
So on a dream our peasant placed his hope,
And found that rush as valid as a rope. 
  Swift fled the days, for now in hope they fled,
When a fair daughter bless’d the nuptial bed;
Her infant-face the mother’s pains beguiled,
She look’d so pleasing and so softly smiled;
Those smiles, those looks, with sweet sensations moved
The gazer’s soul, and as he look’d he loved. 
   And now the fairies came with gifts, to grace
So mild a nature, and so fair a face. 
They gave, with beauty, that bewitching art,
That holds in easy chains the human heart;
They gave her skill to win the stubborn mind,
To make the suffering to their sorrows blind,