When Delia on the plain appears,
Awed by a thousand tender fears,
I would approach, but dare not move :
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?
Whene'er she speaks, my ravish'd ear
No other voice but hers can hear,
No other wit but hers approve :
Tell me my heart if this be love?
If she some other youth commend, Though I was once his fondest friend, His instant enemy I prove:
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?
When she is absent, I no more
Delight in all that pleas'd before,
The clearest spring, or shadiest grove :
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?
When, fond of power, of beauty vain,
Her nets she spread for every swain;
I strove to hate, but vainly strove :
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?
Say, Myra, why is gentle love
A stranger to that mind,
Which pity and esteem can move;
Which can be just and kind?
Is it, because you fear to share
The ills that Love molest;
The jealous doubt, the tender care,
That rack the amorous breast?
Alas! by some degree of woe
We every bliss must gain :
The heart can ne'er a transport know,
That never feels a pain.
THE HEAVY HOURS ARE ALMOST PASS'D.
The heavy hours are almost pass'd
That part my love and me:
My longing eyes may hope at last
Their only wish to see.
But how, my Delia, will you meet
The man you've lost so long?
Will love in all your pulses beat,
And tremble on your tongue?
Will you in every look declare
Your heart is still the same,
And heal each idly anxious care,
Our fears in absence frame.
Thus, Delia, thus I paint the scene,
When shortly we shall meet;
And try what yet remains between
Of loitering time to cheat.
But if the dream that soothes my mind
Shall false and groundless prove;
If I am doom'd at length to find
You have forgot to love;
All I of Venus ask, is this:
No more to let us join :
But grant me here the flattering bliss
To die, and think you mine.
Yes, I'm in love, I feel it now,
And Celia has undone me;
And yet I swear I can't tell how
The pleasing plague stole on me.
'Tis not her face that love creates,
For there no graces revel;
'Tis not her shape, for there the fates,
Have rather been uncivil.
not her air, for sure in that There's nothing more than common, And all her sense is only chat,
Like any other woman.
Her voice, her touch might give th' alarm,
In short, 'twas that provoking charm
'Twas both perhaps, or neither;
Of Celia altogether.
His poems, and his name are now sinking into obscurity.]
[William Whitehead succeeded Colley Cibber as Poet Laureat.
Born 1709-Died 1784.
Not the soft sighs of vernal gales,
The fragrance of the flowery vales,
The murmurs of the crystal rill,
Not all their charms, though all unite
Not all the gems on India's shore,
Not all Peru's unbounded store,
Not all the power, nor all the fame,
That heroes, kings, or poets claim;
Nor knowledge which the learn'd approve,
To form one wish my soul can move.
Yet Nature's charms allure my eyes,
And knowledge, wealth, and fame I prize;
Fame, wealth, and knowledge I obtain,
Nor seek I Nature's charms in vain;
In lovely Stella all combine,
And, lovely Stella! thou art mine.
I told my nymph, I told her true,
My fields were small, my flocks were few;
While faultering accents spoke my fear,
That Flavia might not prove sincere.
Of crops destroy'd by vernal cold,
And vagrant sheep that left fold:
Of these she heard, yet bore to hear;
And is not Flavia then sincere?
How chang'd by fortune's fickle wind,
The friends I lov'd became unkind,
She heard, and shed a generous tear;
And is not Flavia then sincere ?
|