Love! inform thy faithful creature How to keep his fair one's heart; Must it be by truth of nature, Or by poor dissembling art? Tell the secret, show the wonder, How we both may gain our ends;...
Touch the lyre, touch every string; Touch it, Orpheus; I will sing A song which shall immortal be, Since she I sing's a deity; A Leonora, whose bless'd birth Has no relation to this earth.
Let perjured fair Amynta know What for her sake I undergo; Tell her, for her how I sustain A lingering fever's wasting pain; Tell her the torments I endure, Which only, only she can cure. ...
Phillis, this pious talk give o'er, And modesty pretend no more, It is too plain an art: Surely you take me for a fool, And would by this prove me so dull As not to know your heart. ...
Alexis shun'd his Fellow Swains, Their rural Sports, and jocund Strains: (Heav'n guard us all from Cupid's Bow!) He lost his Crook, He left his Flocks; And wand'ring thro' the lonely Rocks,...
In Virgil's Sacred Verse we find, That Passion can depress or raise The Heav'nly, as the Human Mind: Who dare deny what Virgil says? But if They shou'd; what our Great Master...
Poor, little, pretty, fluttering thing, Must we no longer live together? And dost thou prune thy trembling wing, To take thy flight thou know'st not whither? Thy humorous vein, thy pleasing folly,...
Two mice, dear boy, of genteel fashion, And, what is more, good education, Frolic and gay, in infant years Equally shared their parents' cares. The sire of these two babes (poor creature)...
Forgive the muse who, in unhallow'd strains, The saint one moment from his God detains; For sure whate'er you do, where'er you are, 'Tis all but one good work, one constant prayer....
Here reading how fond Adam was betray'd, And how by sin Eve's blasted charms decay'd, Our common loss unjustly you complain, So small that part of it which you sustain. ...
When future ages shall with wonder view These glorious lines which Harley's daughter drew, They shall confess that Britain could not raise A fairer column to the father's praise.