Gain on your purpos'd will. Nor in the bower,
Where woodbinds flaunt, and roses fhed a couch,
While evening draws her crimson curtains round,
Truft your foft minutes with betraying Man.
AND let th' aspiring youth beware of love,
Of the smooth glance beware; for 'tis too late,
When on his heart the torrent-softness pours.
Then wisdom proftrate lies, and fading fame
Diffolves in air away; while the fond foul,
Wrapt in gay vifions of unreal blifs,
Still paints th' illufive form; the kindling grace;
Th' inticing smile; the modeft-seeming eye,
Beneath whose beauteous beams, belying heaven,
Lurk fearchlefs cunning, cruelty, and death:
And ftill, falfe-warbling in his cheated ear,
Her fyren voice, enchanting, draws him on
To guileful shores, and meads of fatal joy.
EVEN prefent, in the very lap of love
Inglorious laid; while mufic flows around,
Perfumes, and oils, and wine, and wanton hours;
Amid the roses fierce Repentance rears
Her fnaky creft; a quick-returning pang
Shoots thro' the conscious heart; where honour still,
And great defign, against the oppreffive load
Of luxury, by fits, impatient heave.
BUT abfent, what fantastic woes, arrous'd,
Rage, in each thought, by restless musing fed,
Chill the warm cheek, and blast the bloom of life?
Neglected fortune flies; and fliding swift,
Prone into ruin, fall his fcorn'd affairs.
'Tis nought but gloom around: The darkened fun
Lofes his light: The rofy-bofom'd Spring
To weeping fancy pines; and yon bright arch,
Contracted, bends into a dufky vault.
All Nature fades extinct; and she alone
Heard, felt, and feen, poffeffes every thought,
Fills every fenfe, and pants in every vein.
Books are but formal dulness, tedious friends
And fad amid the focial band he fits,
Lonely, and unattentive. From his tongue
Th' unfinish'd period falls: while borne away
On fwelling thought, his wafted spirit flies
To the vain bofom of his distant fair;
And leaves the femblance of a lover, fix'd
In melancholy fite, with head declin'd,
And love-dejected eyes. Sudden he starts,
Shook from his tender trance, and reftlefs runs
To glimmering fhades, and fympathetic glooms;
Where the dun umbrage o'er the falling ftream,
Romantic, hangs; there thro' the penfive dufk 1025
Strays, in heart-thrilling meditation loft,
Indulging all to love: or on the bank
Thrown, amid drooping lilies, fwells the breeze
With fighs unceafing, and the brook with tears.
Thus in foft anguish he consumes the day,
Nor quits his deep retirement, till the Moon
Peeps thro' the chambers of the fleecy east,
Enlightened by degrees, and in her train
Leads on the gentle hours; then forth he walks,
Beneath the trembling languish of her beam,
With foftened foul, and wooes the bird of eve
To mingle woes with his or, while the world
And all the fons of Care lie hufh'd in fleep,
Affociates with the midnight shadows drear;
And, fighing to the lonely taper, pours
His idly-tortur❜d heart into the page,
Meant for the moving meffenger of love;
Where rapture burns on rapture, every line
With rifing frenzy fir'd. But if on bed
Delirious flung, fleep from his pillow flies.
All night he toffes, nor the balmy power
In any pofture finds; till the grey morn
Lifts her pale luftre on the paler wretch,
Exanimate by love and then perhaps
Exhaufted Nature finks a while to reft,
Still interrupted by distracted dreams,
That o'er the fick imagination rife,
And in black colours paint the mimic scene.
Oft with th' enchantress of his foul he talks ;
Sometimes in crouds diftrefs'd; or if retir'd
To fecret winding flower-enwoven bowers,
Far from the dull impertinence of Man,
Juft as he, credulous, his endlefs cares
Begins to lofe in blind oblivious love,
Snatch'd from her yielded hand, he knows not how,
Thro' forefts huge, and long untravel'd heaths 1061
With defolation brown, he wanders waste,
In night and tempeft wrapt; or shrinks aghaft,
Back, from the bending precipice; or wades
The turbid ftream below, and ftrives to reach 1065
The farther fhore; where fuccourlefs, and fad,
She with extended arms his aid implores ;
But strives in vain: borne by th' outrageous flood
To distance down, he rides the ridgy wave,
Or whelm❜d beneath the boiling eddy finks.
THESE are the charming agonies of love,
Whose misery delights. But thro' the heart
Should jealoufy its venom once diffuse,
'Tis then delightful mifery no more,
But agony unmix'd, inceffant gall,
Corroding every thought, and blafting all
'Love's paradise. Ye fairy profpects, then,
Ye beds of rofes, and ye bowers of joy,
Farewel! Ye gleamings of departed peace,
Shine out your laft! the yellow-tinging plague 1080 Internal vifion taints, and in a night
Of livid gloom imagination wraps.
Ah then; instead of love-enlivened cheeks,
Of funny features, and of ardent eyes
With flowing rapture bright, dark looks fucceed,
Suffus'd and glaring with untender fire;
A clouded afpect, and a burning cheek,
Where the whole poifon'd foul, malignant, fits,
And frightens love away. Ten thousand fears
Invented wild, ten thousand frantic views
Of horrid rivals, hanging on the charms
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