Classic Poem

WHICH BELINDA GAVE ME FROM HER BOSOM .

O lovely offspring of the May!
Whence flow thy balmy odours, say?
Such odours — not the orient boasts,
Tho' Paradise adorn'd the coasts.
O! sweeter than each flower that blooms
This fragrance from thy bosom comes!
Thence, thence, such sweets are spread abroad
As might be incense for a god!
When Venus stood conceal'd from view,
Her son the latent goddess knew,
Such sweets breath'd round! and thus we know
Our other Venus here below.
But see, my fairest! see this flow'r,
This short-liv'd beauty of an hour! —
Such are thy charms! — yet zephyrs bring
The flow'r to bloom again in spring;
But beauty, when it once declines,
No more to warm the lover shines.
Alas! incessant speeds the day
When thou shall be but common clay!
When I who now adore may see
And e'en with horror start from thee!
But ere, sweet gift! thy grace consumes,
Show thou my fair one how she blooms;
Put forth thy charms — and then declare
Thyself less sweet, thyself less fair;
Then sudden, by a swift decay,
Let all thy beauties fade away,
And let her in thy glass descry
How youth and how frail beauty die.
Ah! turn, my charmer! turn thy eyes;
See how at once it fades, it dies!
While thine — it gaily pleas'd the view,
Unfaded as before it grew,
Now from thy bosom doom'd to stray,
'Tis only beauteous in decay.
So the sweet smelling Indian flow'rs,
Griev'd when they leave those happier shores,
Sicken and die away in ours:
So flow'rs in Eden fond to blow
In Paradise would only grow.
Nor wonder, fairest! to survey
The flow'r so suddenly decay.
Too cold thy breast; nor can it grow
Between such little hills of snow.
I now, vain Infidel! no more
Deride th' Egyptians, who adore
The rising herb and blooming flow'r:
Now, now, their convert I will be,
O lovely flow'r! to worship thee.
But if thou'rt one of their sad train
Who dy'd for love and cold disdain,
Who, chang'd by some kind pitying pow'r,
A lover once, art now a flow'r:
O pity me! O weep my care!
A thousand thousand pains I bear;
I love, I die, thro' deep despair!