THE PICTURE OF T. C. IN A PROSPECT OF FLOWERS. See with what simplicity This nymph begins her golden days! And there with her fair aspect tames The wilder flowers and gives them names, But only with the roses plays, And them does tell What colours best become them, and what smell. Who can foretell for what high cause Appease this virtuous enemy of man! O then let me in time compound Let me be laid Where I may see the glories from some shade. Meantime, whilst every verdant thing But most procure That violets may a longer age endure. But O, young beauty of the woods, Lest Flora, angry at thy crime To kill her infants in their prime, Should quickly make the example yours, Nip, in the blossom, all our hopes in thee. THE MOWER TO THE GLOW-WORMS. Ye living lamps, by whose dear light Ye country comets, that portend Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame Your courteous lights in vain you waste, For she my mind hath so displaced, That I shall never find my home. JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER. 1647-1680. ["Poems on Several Occasions." (?) 1680.] A SONG. ALL my past life is mine no more, The time that is to come is not; How can it then be mine? The present moment 's all my lot; And that, as fast as it is got, Phillis, is only thine. Then talk not of inconstancy, False hearts, and broken vows; If I, by miracle, can be This live-long minute true to thee, 'Tis all that Heaven allows. SONG. Give me leave to rail at you, To call you false, and then to say I must be your captive still. Cannot change, and would not die. Kindness has resistless charms, All besides but weakly move; And clips the wings of flying Love. It gilds the lover's servile chain, And makes the slaves grow pleased again. FAREWELL, my sweet, until I come Such as thou canst not then but take. To loyalty my love must bow, My honour, too, calls to the field, Where, for a lady's busk, I now Must keen and sturdy iron wield. Yet, when I rush into those arms, Where death and danger do combine, I shall less subject be to harms Than to those killing eyes of thine. Since I could live in thy disdain, Thou art so far become my fate, That I by nothing can be slain, Until thy sentence speaks my date. |