Charles Lamb (1775–1834)

BY Enfield lanes, and Winchmore’s verdant hill,

Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk:

The fair Maria, as a vestal, still;

And Emma brown, exuberant in talk.

With soft and lady speech the first applies

The mild correctives that to grace belong

To her redundant friend, who her defies

With jest, and mad discourse, and bursts of song.

O differing Pair, yet sweetly thus agreeing,

What music from your happy discord rises,

While your companion hearing each, and seeing,

Nor this, nor that, but both together, prizes;

This lesson teaching, which our souls may strike,

That harmonies may be in things unlike!