They were in full
possession of their senses and their affections. Their hopes were of
air, their desires of fire. Youth is the season of love, because the
heart is then first melted in tenderness from the touch of novelty,
and kindled to rapture, for it knows no end of its enjoyments or its
wishes. Desire has no limit but itself. Passion, the love and
expectation of pleasure, is infinite, extravagant, inexhaustible,
till experience comes to check and kill it. Juliet exclaims on her
first interview with Romeo:
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep.
And why should it not? What was to hinder the thrilling tide of
pleasure, which had just gushed from her heart, from flowing on
without stint or measure, but experience which she was yet without?
What was to abate the transport of the first sweet sense of
pleasure, which her heart and her senses had just tasted, but
indifference which she was yet a stranger to? What was there to
check the ardour of hope, of faith, of constancy, just rising in her
breast, but disappointment which she had not yet felt? As are the
desires and the hopes of youthful passion, such is the keenness of
its disappointments, and their baleful effect. Such is the
transition in this play from the highest bliss to the lowest
despair, from the nuptial couch to an untimely grave.
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