The delusive
pleasures that follow in the train of dark-browed night, all told of
Edwin. The unreal mockery of that capricious being, who cheats us with
scenes of fictitious wretchedness, was full of the unmerited calamities,
the heartbreaking woe, or the untimely death of Edwin. From Edwin
therefore the language of love would have created no disgust. Imogen was
not heedless and indiscreet; she would not have sacrificed the dignity
of innocence. Imogen was not coy; she would not have treated her admirer
with affected disdain. She had no guard but virgin modesty and that
conscious worth, _that would be wooed, and not unsought be won_.
Such was the yet immature attachment of our two lovers, when an
anniversary of religious mirth summoned them, together with their
neighbour shepherds of the adjacent hamlet, to the spot which had long
been consecrated to rural sports and guiltless festivity, near the
village of Ruthyn. The sun shone with unusual splendour; the Druidical
temples, composed of immense and shapeless stones, heaped upon each
other by a power stupendous and incomprehensible, reflected back his
radiant beams. The glade, the place of destination to the frolic
shepherds, was shrouded beneath two venerable groves that encircled it
on either side.
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