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I / I now mean to be serious; -- it is time, / Since laughter now-a-days is deem'd too serious. / A jest at Vice by Virtue's call'd a crime, / And critically held as deleterious: / Besides, the sad's a source of the sublime, / Although when long a little apt to weary us; / And therefore shall my lay soar high and solemn, / As an old temple dwindled to a column.
II / The Lady Adeline Amundeville / ('Tis an old Norman name, and to be found / In pedigrees, by those who wander still / Along the last fields of that Gothic ground) / Was high-born, wealthy by her father's will, / And beauteous, even where beauties most abound, / In Britain -- which of course true patriots find / The goodliest soil of body and of mind.