Soft silken hours,
Open suns, shady bowers;
'Bove all, nothing within that lours ;
Whate'er delight
Can make Day's forehead bright
Or give down to the wings of Night. -4
In her whole frame
Have Nature all the name,
Art and Ornament the shame !
Her flattery
5 Picture and Poesy : Her counsel her own virtue be.
I wish her store
Of worth may leave her poor
Of wishes; and I wish—no more.
Now if Time knows
That Her, whose radiant brows
Weave them a garland of my vows,
Her whose just bays
My future hopes can raise
A trophy to her present praise,
Her that dares be
What these lines wish to see :
I seek no further—it is She.
'Tis She, and here
Lo! unclothe and clear
My Wishes' cloudy character.
May She enjoy it
Whose merit dare[s] apply it
But Modesty dares still deny it!
Such Worth as this is
Shall fix my flying wishes,
And determine them to kisses.
Let her full glory,
My fancies ! fly before ye!
Be you my fictions, but Her Story!
Love, brave Virtue's younger Brother,
Erst hath made my heart a mother;
She consults the conscious Spheres
To calculate her young son's years.
She asks if sad or saving powers
Gave omen to his infant hours;
She asks each star that then stood by
If poor Love shall live or die.
Ah! my heart, is that the way?
Are these the beams that rule thy day?
Thou know'st a face, in whose each look,
Beauty lays ope Love's fortune-book,
On whose fair revolutions wait
The obsequious motions of Love's fate;
Ah! my heart, her eyes and she
Have taught thee new astrology.
Howe'er Love's native hours were set,
Whatever starry synod met,
'Tis in the mercy of her eye,
If poor Love shall live or die.
If those sharp rays, putting on
Points of death, bid Love be gone,
(Though the Heavens in counsel sate,
To crown an uncontrolled fate,
Though their best aspects twined upon
The kindest constellation,
Cast amorous glances on his birth,
And whisper'd the confed'rate Earth
To pave his paths with all the good
That warms the bed of youth and blood,)
Love has no plea against her eye:
Beauty frowns, and Love must die.
But if her milder influence move,
And gild the hopes of humble Love: (Though Heaven's inauspicious eye Lay black on Love's nativity ;
Though every diamond in Jove's crown
Fixed his forehead to a frown,)
Her eye a strong appeal can give,
Beauty smiles, and Love shall live.
O if Love shall live, O, where
But in her eye, or in her ear,
In her breast, or in her breath,
Shall I hide poor Love from Death ?
For in the life aught else can give,
Love shall die, although he live.
Or if Love shall die, O, where,
But in her eye, or in her ear,
In her breath, or in her breast,
Shall I build his funeral nest ?
While Love shall thus entombed lie,
Love shall live, although he die.
upon the Death of a Gentleman.
Faithless and fond Mortality !
Who will ever credit thee?
Fond and faithless thing! that thus,
In our best hopes beguilest us.
What a reckoning hast thou made,
Of the hopes in him we laid ?
For life by volumes lengthenéd,
A line or two to speak him dead.
For the laurel in his verse
The sullen cypress o'er his hearse.
For a silver-crowned head
A dirty pillow in Death's bed.<
For so dear, so deep a trust,
Sad requital, thus much dust!
Now though the blow that snatch him hence
Stopp'd the mouth of Eloquence,
Though she be dumb e'er since his death,
Not used to speak but in his breath,
Yet if at least she not denies
The sad language of our eyes,
We are contented: for than this
Language none more fluent is.
Nothing speaks our grief so well
As to speak nothing. Come then, tell
Thy mind in tears, whoe'er thou be
That ow'st a name to misery :
> Eyes are vocal, tears have tongues,
And there be words not made with lungs ;
Sententious showers, O, let them fall,
Their cadence is rhetorical.
Here's a theme will drink th' expense
Of all thy watery eloquence;
Weep then, only be exprest
Thus much: He's dead; and weep the rest.
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