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CUPID IN AMBUSH.

Ir oft to many has successful been,
Upon his arm to let his mistress lean;
Or with her airy fan to cool her heat,

Or gently squeeze her knees, or press her feet.
All public sports, to favour young desire,
With opportunities like this conspire.
Even where his skill the gladiator shows,
With human blood where the arena flows;
There oftentimes love's quiver-bearing boy
Prepares his bow and arrows to destroy.
While the spectator gazes on the fight,
And sees them wound each other with delight;
While he his pretty mistress entertains,
And wagers with her who the conquest gains;
Slily the god takes aim, and hits his heart,
And in the wounds he sees he bears his part.

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THE TURTLE AND SPARROW.

AN ELEGIAC TALE, OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH
OF PRINCE GEORGE, 1708.

BEHIND an unfrequented glade,

Where yew and myrtle mix their shade,
A widowed turtle pensive sat,
And wept her murdered lover's fate.
The sparrow chanced that way to walk
(A bird that loves to chirp and talk);
Be sure he did the turtle greet;
She answered him as she thought meet.
Sparrows and turtles, by the bye,
Can think as well as you or I;

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But how they did their thoughts express,
The margin shows by T. and S.

T. My hopes are lost, my joys are fled,
Alas! I weep Columbo dead;
Come, all ye winged lovers, come,
Drop pinks and daisies on his tomb;
Sing, Philomel, his funeral verse,
Ye pious redbreasts, deck his hearse;
Fair swans, extend your dying throats,
Columbo's death requires your notes:
For him, my friends, for him I moan,
My dear Columbo, dead and gone.'

Stretched on the bier Columbo lies,
Pale are his cheeks, and closed his eyes;
Those cheeks, where beauty smiling lay;
Those eyes, where love was used to play.
Ah! cruel Fate, alas! how soon
That beauty and those joys are flown!
Columbo is no more; ye floods,
Bear the sad sound to distant woods;
The sound let echo's voice restore,
And Columbo is no more,

say,

'Ye floods, ye woods, ye echoes, moan,
My dear Columbo, dead and gone.'

The dryads all forsook the wood,
And mournful naïads round me stood;
The tripping fawns and fairies came,
All conscious of our mutual flame:
To sigh for him, with me to moan
My dear Columbo, dead and gone.'

Venus disdained not to appear,
To lend my grief a friendly ear;
But what avails her kindness now,
She ne'er shall hear my second vow.

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The loves, that round their mother flew,
Did in her face her sorrows view;
Their drooping wings they pensive hung,
Their arrows broke, their bows unstrung;
They heard attentive what I said,
And wept, with me, Columbo dead:
For him I sigh, for him I moan,
My dear Columbo, dead and gone.'

Tis ours to weep,' great Venus said;
'Tis Jove's alone to be obeyed:
Nor birds nor goddesses can move
The just behests of fatal Jove.
I saw thy mate with sad regret,
And cursed the fowler's cruel net.
Ah, dear Columbo! how he fell,
Whom Turturella loved so well!
I saw him bleeding on the ground,
The sight tore up my ancient wound;
And, whilst you wept, alas! I cried,
Columbo and Adonis died.'

'Weep all ye streams; ye mountains, groan, I mourn Columbo, dead and gone;

Still let my tender grief complain,

Nor day nor night that grief restrain :'
I said; and Venus still replied,
'Columbo and Adonis died.'

S. Poor Turturella, hard thy case,

And just thy tears, alas, alas!

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T. And hast thou loved; and canst thou hear With piteous heart a lover's care:

Come then, with me thy sorrows join,
And ease my woes by telling thine:
For thou, poor bird, perhaps mayst moan
Some Passerella dead and gone.

S. Dame Turtle, this runs soft in rhyme,
But neither suits the place nor time;
The fowler's hand, whose cruel care
For dear Columbo set the snare,
The snare again for thee may set;
Two birds may perish in one net,
Thou shouldst avoid this cruel field,
And sorrow should to prudence yield.
'Tis sad to die!—

T.

It may be so;

'Tis sadder yet to live in woe.

S. When widows use this canting strain, They seem resolved to wed again.

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T. When widowers would this truth disprove, They never tasted real love.

S. Love is soft joy and gentle strife,
His efforts all depend on life.

When he has thrown two golden darts,
And struck the lovers' mutual hearts;
Of his black shafts let death send one,
Alas! the pleasing game is done:
Ill is the poor survivor sped,
A corpse feels mighty cold in bed.
Venus said right-Nor tears can move,
Nor plaints revoke the will of Jove.'

All must obey the general doom,
Down from Alcides to Tom Thumb.
Grim Pluto will not be withstood
By force or craft. Tall Robinhood,
As well as Little John, is dead
(You see how deeply I am read).

With Fate's lean tipstaff none can dodge,
He'll find you out where'er you lodge.
Ajax, to shun his general power,

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In vain absconded in a flower;
An idle scene Tythonus acted,
When to a grasshopper contracted;

Death struck them in those shapes again,
As once he did when they were men.

For reptiles perish, plants decay;
Flesh is but grass, grass turns to hay;
And hay to dung, and dung to clay.

Thus heads extremely nice discover,
That folks may die some ten times over;
But oft, by too refined a touch,

To prove things plain, they prove too much.
Whate'er Pythagoras may say

(For each, you know, will have his way),
With great submission I

pronounce,
That people die no more than once.
But once is sure; and death is common
To bird and man, including woman;
From the spread eagle to the wren,
Alas! no mortal fowl knows when;
All that wear feathers first or last
Must one day perch on Charon's mast;
Must lie beneath the cypress shade,
Where Strada's nightingale was laid;
Those fowl who seem alive to sit,
Assembled by Don Chaucer's wit,
In prose have slept three hundred years;
Exempt from worldly hopes and fears,
And, laid in state upon their hearse,
Are truly but embalmed in verse.
As sure as Lesbia's sparrow I,

Thou sure as Prior's dove,1 must die,
And ne'er again from Lethe's streams,

1 See the Dove.

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