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To Venus
AGAIN? new tumults in my breast? | |
| Ah, spare me, Venus! let me, let me rest! | |
| I am not now, alas! the man | |
| As in the gentle reign of my Queen Anne. | |
| Ah! sound no more thy soft alarms, | 5 |
| Nor circle sober fifty with thy charms. | |
| Mother too fierce of dear desires! | |
| Turn, turn to willing hearts your wanton fires: | |
| To number five direct your doves, | |
| There spread round Murray all your blooming Loves; | 10 |
| Noble and young, who strikes the heart | |
| With ev’ry sprightly, ev’ry decent part; | |
| Equal the injured to defend, | |
| To charm the Mistress, or to fix the Friend. | |
| He, with a hundred arts refin’d, | 15 |
| Shall stretch thy conquests over half the kind: | |
| To him each rival shall submit, | |
| Make but his Riches equal to his Wit. | |
| Then shall thy form the marble grace, | |
| (Thy Grecian form) and Chloe lend the face: | 20 |
| His house, embosom’d in the grove, | |
| Sacred to social life and social love, | |
| Shall glitter o’er the pendant green, | |
| Where Thames reflects the visionary scene: | |
| Thither, the silver-sounding lyres | 25 |
| Shall call the smiling Loves, and young Desires; | |
| There, ev’ry Grace and Muse shall throng, | |
| Exalt the dance, or animate the song; | |
| There Youths and Nymphs, in concert gay, | |
| Shall hail the rising, close the parting day. | 30 |
| With me, alas! those joys are o’er; | |
| For me, the vernal garlands bloom no more. | |
| Adieu, fond hope of mutual fire, | |
| The still-believing, still-renew’d desire; | |
| Adieu, the heart-expanding bowl, | 35 |
| And all the kind deceivers of the soul! | |
| But why? ah tell me, ah too dear! | |
| Steals down my cheek th’ involuntary Tear? | |
| Why words so flowing, thoughts so free, | |
| Stop, or turn nonsense, at one glance of thee? | 40 |
| Thee, drest in Fancy’s airy beam, | |
| Absent I follow thro’ th’ extended Dream; | |
| Now, now I seize, I clasp thy charms, | |
| And now you burst (ah cruel!) from my arms; | |
| And swiftly shoot along the Mall, | 45 |
| Or softly glide by the Canal, | |
| Now, shown by Cynthia’s silver ray, | |
| And now, on rolling waters snatch’d away. | |
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