Fie on boys! In women's arms
We shall find more lasting charms.
Nor do I love the hair that shows
All too soon on cheeks of rose.
Youths have lost their beauty when
They begin to look like men.

Reason and Love lately at strife contended,
Whose right it was to have my mind's protection.
Reason on his side Nature's will pretended;
Love's title was my Mistress' rare perfection.
Of power to end this strife, each makes election:
Reason's pretence discoursive thoughts defended;
But Love soon brought those thoughts into subjection
By Beauty's troops, which on my saint depended.
Yet since to rule the mind was Reason's duty,
On this condition it by Love was rendered;
That endless praise by Reason should be tendered,

Now you have thrown your pride away
And yielded to the Cyprian's dart,
I in your arms a captive stay,
Enfolded to your heart.

Body and soul together meet
And mingle in love's swelling wave,
Nor while I fell these fetters sweet
Shall I my freedom crave.

IMITATED FROM THE FRENCH .

Yes, these are the scenes where with Iris I stray'd,
But short was her sway for so lovely a maid!
In the bloom of her youth to a cloister she run,
In the bloom of her graces too fair for a nun!
Ill-grounded, no doubt, a devotion must prove,
So fatal to beauty, so killing to love!

Yes, these are the meadows, the shrubs, and the plains,
Once the scene of my pleasures, the scene of my pains;
How many soft moments I spent in this grove!
How fair was my nymph! and how fervent my love!

" Break ev'ry yoke; " the Gospel cries,
" And let th' oppress'd go free; "
Let ev'ry burden'd captive rise,
And taste sweet Liberty.

Lord! when shall man thy voice obey,
And rend each iron chain?
Oh! when shall Love its golden sway
O'er all the earth maintain?

Send thy good Spirit from above,
And melt th' oppressor's heart;
Send swift deliv'rance to the slave,
And bid his woes depart.

With joy and gladness crown his day,
And fill his heart with love;
Teach him the strait and only way,

The blaze that scorched my flesh of old
Is quenched and dim: I die of cold.
Love's furnace panting in its greed
Has now but bones whereon to feed,
And my poor heart, to ashes turned,
Has naught within it left unburned.
E'en as some altar at the close of day,
Its victim spent, untended dies away.

I told my nymph, I told her true,
My fields were small, my flocks were few,
While falt'ring accents spoke my fear,
That Flavia might not prove sincere.

Of crops destroy'd by vernal cold,
And vagrant sheep that left my fold;
Of these she heard, yet bore to hear;
And is not Flavia then sincere?

How, changed by Fortune's fickle wind,
The friends I loved became unkind;
She heard, and shed a generous tear;
And is not Flavia then sincere?

How, if she deign my love to bless,
My Flavia must not hope for dress;

WRITTEN AT OXFORD, WHEN YOUNG .

Shall Love alone for ever claim
An universal right to fame,
An undisputed sway?
Or has not Music equal charms,
To fill the breast with strange alarms.
And make the world obey?

The Thracian bard, as poets tell,
Could mitigate the powers of hell,
E'en Pluto's nicer ear:
His arts, no more than Love's, we find
To deities or men confined,
Drew brutes in crowds to hear.

My land is a woman who knows
Not the child at her breast.
All her quest
Hath been gold.
All her joys, all her woes
With the thin, yellow leaf are unrolled.
And here is my grief that no longer she cares
For the tumult that crowds in a rune
When the white curving throat of a cataract bares
In a song to the high floating moon.
I am Caneo,
The poet she loves not, grown bold.
Bold am I as all men grow bold
Who wash themselves long in the sun:
I know what she lost when she gathered the gold
And she alone knows what she won.

Bold love has led me here;
So let me in, I pray,
If my love sleeps alone;
If not I'll go away.
And give this token of my passion true:
" Reeling with wine, through thieves I came to you."