I fix’d the portion for his hungry hind;
And had your father (simple man!) obey’d
My good advice, and watch’d as well as pray’d,
He might have left you something with his prayers,
And lent some colour for these lofty airs. —
   “In tears, my love!  Oh, then my soften’d heart
Cannot resist—­we never more will part;
I need your friendship—­I will be your friend,
And, thus determined, to my Will attend.” 
   Jesse went forth, but with determined soul
To fly such love, to break from such control: 
“I hear enough,” the trembling damsel cried;
Flight be my care, and Providence my guide: 
Ere yet a prisoner, I escape will make;
Will, thus display’d, th’ insidious arts forsake,
And, as the rattle sounds, will fly the fatal snake.” 
   Jesse her thanks upon the morrow paid,
Prepared to go, determined though afraid. 
   “Ungrateful creature!” said the Lady, “this
Could I imagine?—­are you frantic, miss? 
What! leave your friend, your prospects—­is it true?”
This Jesse answer’d by a mild “Adieu?”
   The Dame replied “Then houseless may you rove,
The starving victim to a guilty love;
Branded with shame, in sickness doom’d to nurse
An ill-form’d cub, your scandal and your curse;
Spurn’d by its scoundrel father, and ill fed
By surly rustics with the parish-bread! —
Relent you not?—­speak—­yet I can forgive;
Still live with me.”—­“With you,” said Jesse, “live? 
No!  I would first endure what you describe,
Rather than breathe with your detested tribe;
Who long have feign’d, till now their very hearts
Are firmly fix’d in their accursed parts;
Who all profess esteem, and feel disdain,
And all, with justice, of deceit complain;
Whom I could pity, but that, while I stay,
My terror drives all kinder thoughts away;
Grateful for this, that, when I think of you,
I little fear what poverty can do.” 
   The angry matron her attendant Jane
Summon’d in haste to soothe the fierce disdain:  —
   “A vile detested wretch!” the Lady cried,
“Yet shall she be by many an effort tried,
And, clogg’d with debt and fear, against her will abide;
And, once secured, she never shall depart
Till I have proved the firmness of her heart: 
Then when she dares not, would not, cannot go
I’ll make her feel what ’tis to use me so.” 
   The pensive Colin in his garden stray’d,
But felt not then the beauties it display’d;
There many a pleasant object met his view,
A rising wood of oaks behind it grew;
A stream ran by it, and the village-green
And public road were from the garden seen;
Save where the pine and larch the bound’ry made,
And on the rose-beds threw a softening shade. 
   The Mother sat beside the garden-door,
Dress’d as in times ere she and hers were poor;
The broad-laced cap was known in ancient days,
When madam’s dress compell’d the village praise;