htly on a gentle knee,
And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,--
This, it should seem, was not reserved for me--
Yet this was in my nature:--as it is,
I know not what is there, yet something like to this.

CXVII.

Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught,[353]
I know that thou wilt love me: though my name
Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught
With desolation, and a broken claim:
Though the grave closed between us,--'twere the same,
I know that thou wilt love me--though to drain[354]
_My_ blood from out thy being were an aim,
And an attainment,--all would be in vain,--
Still thou would'st love me, still that more than life retain.

CXVIII.

The child of Love![355] though born in bitterness,
And nurtured in Convulsion! Of thy sire
These were the elements,--and thine no less.
As yet such are around thee,--but thy fire
Shall be more tempered, and thy hope far higher!
Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea
And from the mountains where I now respire,
Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee,
As--with a sigh--I deem thou might'st have been to me![la]

FOOTNOTES:

[275] {209} [D'Alembert (Jean-le-Rond, philosopher, mathematician, and
belletrist, 1717-1783) had recently lost his friend, Mlle. (Claire
Francoise) L'Espinasse, who died May 23, 1776. Frederick prescribes
_quelque probleme bien difficile a resoudre_ as a remedy for vain
regrets (_Oeuvres de Frederic II., Roi de Prusse_, 1790, xiv. 64, 65).]

[276] {215} ["If you turn over the earlier pages of the Huntingdon
peerage story, you will see how common a name Ada was in the early
Plantagenet days. I found it in my own pedigree in the reigns of John
and Henry.... It is short, ancient, vocalic, and had been in my family;
for which reasons I gave it to my daughter."--Letter to Murray, Ravenna,
October 8, 1820.

The Honourable Augusta Ada Byron was born December 10, 1815; was married
July 8, 1835, to William King Noel (1805-1893), eighth Baron King,
created Earl of Lovelace, 1838; and died November 27, 1852. There were
three children of the marriage--Viscount Ockham (d. 1862), the present
Earl of Lovelace, and the Lady Anna Isabella Noel, who was married to
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Esq., in 1869.

"The Countess of Lovelace," wrote a contributor to the _Exam