Brave as he was, our hero felt a dread
Lest those who saw him kind should think him led;
If to his bosom fear a visit paid,
It was, lest he should be supposed afraid: 
Hence sprang his orders; not that he desired
The things when done:  obedience he required;
And thus, to prove his absolute command,
Ruled every heart, and moved each subject hand;
Assent he ask’d for every word and whim,
To prove that he alone was king of him. 
   The still Rebecca, who her station knew,
With ease resign’d the honours not her due: 
Well pleased she saw that men her board would grace,
And wish’d not there to see a female face;
When by her lover she his spouse was styled,
Polite she thought it, and demurely smiled;
But when he wanted wives and maidens round
So to regard her, she grew grave and frown’d;
And sometimes whisper’d—­“Why should you respect
These people’s notions, yet their forms reject?”
   Gwyn, though from marriage bond and fetter free,
Still felt abridgment in his liberty;
Something of hesitation he betray’d,
And in her presence thought of what he said. 
Thus fair Rebecca, though she walk’d astray,
His creed rejecting, judged it right to pray,
To be at church, to sit with serious looks,
To read her Bible and her Sunday-books: 
She hated all those new and daring themes,
And call’d his free conjectures “devil’s dreams:” 
She honour’d still the priesthood in her fall,
And claim’d respect and reverence for them all;
Call’d them “of sin’s destructive power the foes,
And not such blockheads as he might suppose.” 
Gwyn to his friends would smile, and sometimes say,
“’Tis a kind fool; why vex her in her way?”
Her way she took, and still had more in view,
For she contrived that he should take it too. 
The daring freedom of his soul, ’twas plain,
In part was lost in a divided reign;
A king and queen, who yet in prudence sway’d
Their peaceful state, and were in turn obey’d. 
   Yet such our fate, that when we plan the best,
Something arises to disturb our rest: 
For though in spirits high, in body strong,
Gwyn something felt—­he knew not what—­was wrong,
He wish’d to know, for he believed the thing,
If unremoved, would other evil bring: 
“She must perceive, of late he could not eat,
And when he walk’d he trembled on his feet: 
He had forebodings, and he seem’d as one
Stopp’d on the road, or threaten’d by a dun;
He could not live, and yet, should he apply
To those physicians—­he must sooner die.” 
   The mild Rebecca heard with some disdain,
And some distress, her friend and lord complain: 
His death she fear’d not, but had painful doubt
What his distemper’d nerves might bring about;
With power like hers she dreaded an ally,
And yet there was a person in her eye; —
She thought, debated, fix’d—­“Alas!” she said,
“A case like yours must be no more delay’d;