How oft, expressive of the inward smart,
Did groans convulsive issue from his heart!
How oft did blushes own the sacred flame,
How oft his hand unbidden wrote her name!
Now presents worthy of the plighted fair,
And nuptial robes his busy train prepare--
Robes wherewith Livia was herself attired,
And those bright dames that to the beds aspired
Of emperors. Yet the celestial maid
Requires no earthly ornamental aid
To give her faultless form a single grace,
Or add one charm to her bewitching face."
The circumstances of the young poets were far from affluent. Campbell
particularly felt the pressure of poverty. He came hastily one morning
to the lodgings of his friend to request his opinion of some verses;
they were immediately printed, and the copies sold to his
fellow-students for a halfpenny each. So Paul sometimes told his
friends, quoting the following lines as all he could remember of the
production:--
"Loud shriek'd afar the angry sprite,
That rode upon the storm of night,
And loud the waves were heard to roar
That lash'd on Jura's rocky shore."
After several sessions of attendance at college, Paul became tutor to a
family in Argyleshire, and Campbell obtained a similar situation in the
island of Mull. They entered into a humorous correspondence in prose
and verse.
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