By Sylvia if thy charming self be meant; If friendship be thy virgin vows' extent, O! let me in Aminta's praises join, Hers my esteem shall be, my passion thine. When for thy head the garland I prepare,...
Go, faithful Portrait! and where long hath knelt Margaret, the Saintly Foundress, take thy place; And, if Time spare the colours for the grace Which to the work surpassing skill hath dealt,...
What charms you have, from what high race you sprung, Have been the pleasing subjects of my song: Unskill'd and young, yet something still I writ Of Ca'ndish' beauty, join'd to Cecil's wit....
SIR, Your Billingsgate Muse methinks does begin With much greater noise than a conjugal din. A pox of her bawling, her tempora et mores! What are times now to me; a'nt I one of the Tories?...
Since your poetic prancer is turn'd into Cancer, I'll tell you at once, sir, I'm now not your man, sir; For pray, sir, what pleasure in fighting is found With a coward, who studies to traverse his ground?...
The deadnin' and the thicket's jes' a b'ilin' full o' June, From the rattle o' the cricket, to the yaller-hammer's tune; And the catbird in the bottom and the sap-suck on the snag,...
As is your name, so is your comely face Touch'd every where with such diffused grace, As that in all that admirable round, There is not one least solecism found; And as that part, so every portion else...
When this burning flesh Burns down in Time's slow fire to a glowing ash; When these lips have uttered The last word, and the ears' last echoes fluttered; And crumbled these firm bones...
Never my book's perfection did appear Till I had got the name of Villars here: Now 'tis so full that when therein I look I see a cloud of glory fills my book. Here stand it still to dignify our Muse,...
When to thy porch I come and ravish'd see The state of poets there attending thee, Those bards and I, all in a chorus sing: We are thy prophets, Porter, thou our king.
Brave infant of Saguntum, clear Thy coming forth in that great year, When the prodigious Hannibal did crown His rage, with razing your immortal town. Thou looking then about...
A stream, to mingle with your favourite Dee, Along the vale of meditation flows; So styled by those fierce Britons, pleased to see In Nature's face the expression of repose;...
When I of Villars do but hear the name, It calls to mind that mighty Buckingham, Who was your brave exalted uncle here, Binding the wheel of fortune to his sphere,...
On dirt, on stinking wet straw under the shelter of a tumble-down barn, turned in haste into a camp hospital, in a ruined Bulgarian village, for over a fortnight she lay dying of typhus. ...
Handsome you are, and proper you will be Despite of all your infortunity: Live long and lovely, but yet grow no less In that your own prefixed comeliness: Spend on that stock: and when your life must fall,...
Well may my book come forth like public day When such a light as you are leads the way, Who are my work's creator, and alone The flame of it, and the expansion. And look how all those heavenly lamps acquire...
When I through all my many poems look, And see yourself to beautify my book, Methinks that only lustre doth appear A light fulfilling all the region here. Gild still with flames this firmament, and be...
Come, skilful Lupo, now, and take Thy bice, thy umber, pink, and lake; And let it be thy pencil's strife, To paint a Bridgeman to the life: Draw him as like too, as you can,...