No longer repine, adopt this design, And break through her slight-woven net; Away with despair, no longer forbear To fly from the captious coquette. Then quit her, my friend! your bosom defend, Ere quite with her snares you're beset: Lest your deep-wounded heart, when incensed by the smart, Should lead you to curse the coquette. October 27, 1806. TO THE SIGHING STREPHON. YOUR pardon, my friend, if my rhymes did offend; From friendship I strove your pangs to remove, Since your beautiful maid your flame has repaid, She's now most divine, and I bow at the shrine Yet still, I must own, I should never have known Since the balm-breathing kiss of this magical miss Can such wonderful transports produce; Since the "world you forget, when your lips once have met,' My counsel will get but abuse. You say, when "I rove, I know nothing of love;" 'Tis true, I am given to range; If I rightly remember, I've loved a good number, I will not advance, by the rules of romance, Though a smile may delight, yet a frown won't affright, While my blood is thus warm I ne'er shall reform, To mix in the Platonists' school; And if I should shun every woman for one, Whose image must fill my whole breast- Now, Strephon, good bye; I cannot deny TO ELIZA.61 ELIZA, what fools are the Mussulman sect, Who to woman deny the soul's future existence; Could they see thee, Eliza, they'd own their defect, And this doctrine would meet with a general resistance. Had their prophet possess'd half an atom of sense, With women alone he had peopled his heaven. Yet still, to increase your calamities more, Not content with depriving your bodies of spirit, He allots one poor husband to share amongst four !— With souls you'd dispense; but this last, who could bear it? His religion to please neither party is made; On husbands 'tis hard, to the wives most uncivil; Still I can't contradict, what so oft has been said, "Though women are angels, yet wedlock's the devil." LACHIN Y GAIR.65 AWAY, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses! Round their white summits though elements war; Though cataracts foam 'stead of smooth-flowing fountains, I sigh for the valley of dark Loch na Garr. 66 Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wander'd; Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch na Garr. "Shades of the dead! have I not heard your voices Rise on the night-rolling breath of the gale?" Surely the soul of the hero rejoices, And rides on the wind, o'er his own Highland vale. Round Loch na Garr while the stormy mist gathers, Winter presides in his cold icy car: Clouds there encircle the forms of my fathers; They dwell in the tempests of dark Loch na Garr. "Ill starr'd,67 though brave, did no visions foreboding Victory crown'd not your fall with applause: Years have roll'd on, Loch na Garr, since I left you, England! thy beauties are tame and domestic TO ROMANCE. PARENT of golden dreams, Romance! And yet 'tis hard to quit the dreams And must we own thee but a name, And friends have feeling for-- themselves? With shame I own I've felt thy sway; No more thy precepts I obey, VOL. I. Fond fool to love a sparkling eye, And melt beneath a wanton's tear! Romance! disgusted with deceit, Now join with sable Sympathy, With cypress crown'd, array'd in weeds, Who heaves with thee her simple sigh, Whose breast for every bosom bleeds; And call thy sylvan female choir, To mourn a swain for ever gone, Ye genial nymphs, whose ready tears Adieu, fond race! a long adieu! |