n them, yet blush to own their drinking!

_Roger._ This is the New World, man; and Nature here
Is lusty; drink in thy dole of heat and light;
For even I, drenched in the golden rain,
Feel pulsings of lost paradise that make
My blood leap with th' quick-step bound of youth.
This is the very show'r of gold in which
Jove comes to fill the longing world with life.
And as he kisses her with ling'ring lips,
All Nature lies wide open to th' warm embrace
And quickens in his arms.--All, all, but thou!
For thou art single as the northern pole;
As cold, as distant, and unreachable
To what hath passion's warmth; and, though
Thy life be at its summer solstice--bright
With day--thy heart still turns to barren ice,
More bleak than many a wintry age.

_Dimsdell._ How can I change my disposition, Doctor?

_Roger._ Widen the thin ecliptic of thy life;
Revolve upon another axis, man;
Let love, the sun of life, beam meltingly
Upon thy heart and thaw it into happiness.
Marry, man, marry.

_Dimsdell._ I cannot marry: I have my work to do.

_Roger._ If work precedent were to love, the world
Would be unpeopled. This is the month of June,
And now the locust and the linden tree
Do wed the zephyrs as they blow, and weight
The air with oversweetness.--What song is that?

[_Voice of Betsey singing behind scenes._]

_For her, of buttercups and violets,
A circlet for her hair he makes;
And sings, in roundelays and triolets,
A song that soon her fancy takes.
In Summer-tide, sweet Summer-tide,
O, what can a maiden do,
If, while he walks close by her side,
Her lover begins to woo?_

_Roger._ That maid is innocent and happy too.
You may have noticed that--when the heart
Is pure--love overflows the lips in song
As sweet and limpid as a mountain spring;
But--when it's bitter with base treachery--
It dams itself against all utterance,
And either mines the soul, or, breaking forth,
Sweeps downward to destruction. Oh! 'tis true,
Love is the lyric happiness of youth;
And they, who sing its perfect melody,
Do from the honest parish register
Still take their tune. And so must you. For you
Are now in the very period of youth
When myriads of unborn beings knock loud and long
Upon the willing portals of the heart
For entrance into life. Deny it not;