SONGS.

A NUPTIAL SONG.

Come, gentle Venus! and assuage
A warring world, a bleeding age.
For nature lives beneath thy ray,
The wintry tempests haste away,
A lucid calm invests the sea,
Thy native deep is full of thee:
The flowering earth where'er you fly,
Is all o'er spring, all sun the sky.
A genial spirit warms the breeze;
Unseen among the blooming trees,
The feather'd lovers tune their throat,
The desert growls a soften'd note,
Glad o'er the meads the cattle bound,
And love and harmony go round.

But chief into the human heart

You strike the dear delicious dart;
You teach us pleasing pangs to know,
To languish in luxurious wo,
To feel the generous passions rise,
Grow good by gazing, mild by sighs;
Each happy moment to improve,
And fill the perfect year with love.

Come, thou delight of heaven and earth!
To whom all creatures owe their birth;
Oh, come, sweet smiling! tender, come!
And yet prevent our final doom.
For long the furious god of war
Has crush'd us with his iron car

Has raged along our ruin'd plains, Has foil'd them with his cruel stains, Has sunk our youth in endless sleep, And made the widow'd virgin weep. Now let him feel thy wonted charms, Oh, take him to thy twining arms! And, while thy bosom heaves on his, While deep he prints the humid kiss, Ah, then! his stormy heart control, And sigh thyself into his soul.

TO AMANDA.

Unless with my Amanda bless'd,

In vain I twine the woodbine bower; Unless to deck her sweeter breast, In vain I rear the breathing flower.

Awaken'd by the genial year,

In vain the birds around me sing; In vain the freshening fields appear:Without my love, there is no Spring.

TO FORTUNE.

For ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove
An unrelenting foe to love,

And when we meet a mutual heart,
Come in between, and bid us part:

Bid us sigh on from day to day,
And wish, and wish the soul away;
Till youth and genial years are flown,
And all the love of life is gone?

But busy, busy still art thou,
To bind the loveless, joyless vow,

The heart from pleasure to delude,
And join the gentle to the rude.

For pomp, and noise, and senseless show,
To make us Nature's joys forego,
Beneath a gay dominion groan,

And put the golden fetter on!

For once, O Fortune, hear my prayer,
And I absolve thy future care;

All other blessings I resign,

Make but the dear Amanda mine.

COME, GENTLE GOD.

Come, gentle God of soft desire,

Come and possess my happy breast,
Not fury-like in flames and fire,
Or frantic folly's wildness drest;

But come in friendship's angel-guise;
Yet dearer thou than friendship art,
More tender spirit in thy eyes,

More sweet emotions at thy heart.

O, come with goodness in thy train,
With peace and pleasure void of storm;
And wouldst thou me for ever gain,
Put on Amanda's winning form.

TO HER I LOVE.

Tell me, thou soul of her I love,
Ah! tell me, whither art thou fled;
To what delightful world above,
Appointed for the happy dead?

Or dost thou, free, at pleasure roam, And sometimes share thy lover's wo; Where, void of thee, his cheerless home Can now, alas! no comfort know!

Oh! if thou hover'st round my walk, While, under every well-known tree, I to thy fancied shadow talk,

And every tear is full of thee:

Should then the weary eye of grief,
Beside some sympathetic stream,
In slumber find a short relief,

Oh, visit thou my soothing dream!

TO THE GOD OF FOND DESIRE. One day the God of fond desire,

On mischief bent, to Damon said, "Why not disclose your tender fire, Not own it to the lovely maid!"

The shepherd mark'd his treacherous art,
And, softly sighing, thus replied:
""Tis true, you have subdued my heart,
But shall not triumph o'er my pride.

The slave, in private only bears

Your bondage, who his love conceals; But when his passion he declares, You drag him at your chariot-wheels."

THE LOVER'S FATE.

Hard is the fate of him who loves,

Yet dares not tell his trembling pain,

But to the sympathetic groves,

But to the lonely listening plain,

Oh! when she blesses next your shade,
Oh! when her footsteps next are seen
In flowery tracts along the mead,

In fresher mazes o'er the green:

Ye gentle spirits of the vale,

To whom the tears of love are dear,
From dying lilies waft a gale,

And sigh my sorrows in her ear.

Oh! tell her what she cannot blame,
Though fear my tongue must ever bind;
Oh, tell her, that my virtuous flame
Is, as her spotless soul, refined.

Not her own guardian-angel eyes
With chaster tenderness his care,
Not purer her own wishes rise,

Not bolier her own sighs in prayer.

But if at first her virgin fear

Should start at love's suspected name,
With that of friendship soothe her ear—
True love and friendship are the same.

TO THE NIGHTINGALE.

O nightingale, best poet of the grove,
That plaintive strain can ne'er belong to thee,
Bless'd in the full possession of thy love:

O lend that strain, sweet Nightingale, to me! "Tis mine, alas! to mourn my wretched fate:

I love a maid who all my bosom charms, Yet lose my days without this lovely mate; Inhuman fortune keeps her from my arms.

You, happy birds! by nature's simple laws

Lead your soft lives, sustain'd by nature's fare;