THE WELCOME. Go, let the fatted calf be kill'd; And fill'd with sorrow for the past: No more will burn with love or wine; But quite has left his women and his swine. Welcome, ah! welcome, my poor heart! Dear wanderer! since from me you fled, How often have I heard that thou wert dead! Hast thou not found each woman's breast (The lands where thou hast travelled) Either by savages possess'd, Or wild and uninhabited? What joy couldst take, or what repose, In countries so unciviliz'd as those? Lust, the scorching dog-star, here When once or twice you chanced to view A rich, well-govern'd heart, Like China, it admitted you But to the frontier-part. From Paradise shut for evermore, What good is't that an angel kept the door? Well fare the pride, and the disdain, My dove, but once let loose, I doubt THE HEART FLED AGAIN. FALSE, foolish heart! didst thou not say Fled as far from me as before. I strove to bring it back again; The wind bore him and her lost words away. On the wide shore forsaken stood: "False Theseus, whither dost thou go Afar false Theseus cut the flood. But Bacchus came to her relief: ?" Bacchus himself's too weak to ease my grief. Ah! senseless heart, to take no rest, But travel thus eternally! Thus to be frozen in every breast! And to be scorch'd in every eye! Wandering about like wretched Cain, Thrust-out, ill-used, by all, but by none slain! Well, since thou wilt not here remain, WOMEN'S SUPERSTITION. OR I'm a very dunce, or woman-kind By customs and traditions they live, Preach we, Love's prophets, what we will, Before their mothers' Gods they fondly fall, Which they, as we do them, adore. But then, like men both covetous and devout, To these expensive Deities The hearts of men they sacrifice. THE SOUL. SOME dull philosopher-when he hears me say That neither is, nor will be, I, As a form servient and assisting there— Will cry, "Absurd!" and ask me how I live; And syllogisms against it give. A curse on all your vain philosophies, Her body is my soul; laugh not at this, 'Tis that preserves my being and my breath; Nay, all my thoughts and speeches too; And separation from it is my death. ЕСНО. TIRED with the rough denials of my prayer, I come, and find a nymph much gentler here, Ah, gentle nymph! who likest so well In hollow, solitary caves to dwell; Her heart being such, into it go, And do but once from thence answer me so! Complaisant nymph! who dost thus kindly share Was of less beauty, and less ravishing power. Paint thee to her, as describe her to thee, By repercussion beams engender fire; The voice itself, when stopp'd, does back retire, The gainers grow; my barren love alone Does from her stony breast rebound, Producing neither image, fire, nor sound. THE RICH RIVAL. THEY say you're angry, and rant mightily, Alas! you're very rich, 'tis true; But, pr'ythee, fool! what's that to Love and me? When next I see my fair-one, she shall know And, wretch! I'll strike thee dumb and dead, With noble verse not understood by you; Whilst thy sole rhetoric shall be "Jointure" and "jewels," and "our friends agrèe.” |