When I dream that you love me, you'll surely forgive;
Extend not your anger to sleep;
For in visions alone your affection can live,--
I rise, and it leaves me to weep.

Then, Morpheus! envelope my faculties fast,
Shed o'er me your languor benign;
Should the dream of to-night but resemble the last,
What rapture celestial is mine!

They tell us that slumber, the sister of death,
Mortality's emblem is given;
To fate how I long to resign my frail breath,
If this be a foretaste of heaven!

Ho, ye lovers, list to me;
Warning words have I for thee:
Give ye heed, hefore ye wed,
To this thing Sir Chaucer said:

"Love wol not be constrained by maistrie,
When maistrie cometh, the god of love anon
Beteth his winges, and farewel, he is gon."

Other poets knew as well,
And the same sad story tell,
Hark ye, heed ye, while ye may,
What the worldly Pope doth say:

"Love, free as air, at sight of human ties
Spreads his light wings and in a moment flies."

This, Sir Hudibras, brave knight,

To love this flesh,
its rivers and valleys,
its fruits,
ripe or rotting.

To be conscious,
to understand a toad’s agony
or delight.

To finger the pricks of a bush,
lick the blood of the world
with a warm tongue,
and comprehend a crow’s hunger.

To breathe the spring air
full of laughing and weeping,
like a sow thistle
or lazy lizard.

To endure
without any sense of time—
to wake, sleep, live and die
under the same sun, moon and stars,
eternal as a weed.

434

To love thee Year by Year—
May less appear
Than sacrifice, and cease—
However, dear,
Forever might be short, I thought to show—
And so I pieced it, with a flower, now.

TO MRS. MULSO.
I
On Stella's brow as lately envious Time
His crooked lines with iron pencil traced,
That brow, erewhile like ivory tablets smooth,
With Love's high trophies hung, and victories graced,
Digging him little caves in every cell,
And every dimple, once where Love was wont to dwell;
He spied the God: and wondered still to spy,
Who higher held his torch in Time's despite;
Nor seemed to care for aught that he could do.
Then sternly thus he sought him thence to' affright:
The sovereign boy entrenched in a smile,

Sweet tyrant Love,- but hear me now!
And cure while young this pleasing smart;
Or rather aid my trembling vow,
And teach me to reveal my heart.

Tell her, whose goodness is my bane,
Whose looks have smiled my peace away,
Oh! whisper how she gives me pain,
Whilst undesigning, frank, and gay.

'Tis not for common charms I sigh,
For what the vulgar beauty call;
'Tis not a cheek, a lip, an eye,
But 'tis the soul that lights them all!

For that I drop the tender tear,
For that I make this artless moan;

If, Cupid, Heaven is your home, you
are the child of Venus, Nectar and
Ambrosia are your food, then why
do you spend days and nights with
me? Why burn me with your flame,
and quench my thirst with tears?
Why destroy me? You are indeed
descended from wild beasts. Are you
worthy of such descent and of
heaven? But I, I am merely
a shadow, why do you torture me?



Ad amorem.

Si coelum patria est puer beatum,
Si vero peperit VENUS benigna,
Si Nectar tibi Massicum ministrat;

Lesbia! since far from you I've ranged,
Our souls with fond affection glow not;
You say 'tis I, not you, have changed,
I'd tell you why,--but yet I know not.

Your polish'd brow no cares have crost;
And, Lesbia! we are not much older,
Since, trembling, first my heart I lost,
Or told my love, with hope grown bolder

Sixteen was then our utmost age,
Two years have lingering past away, love!
And now new thoughts our minds engage,
At least I feel disposed to stray, love!

'Tis I that am alone to blame,

At length must Suffolk beauties shine in vain,
So long renown'd in B-n's deathless strain?
Thy charms at least, fair Firebrace, might inspire
Some zealous bard to wake the sleeping lyre:
For such thy beauteous mind and lovely face,
Thou seem'st at once, bright nymph, a
Muse and Grace
.

ON HIS BRINGING ME FLOWERS FROM VAUCLUSE, AND
WHICH HE HAD PRESERVED BY MEANS OF
AN INGENIOUS PROCESS IN THEIR
ORIGINAL BEAUTY.


SWEET spoils of consecrated bowers,
How dear to me these chosen flowers!
I love the simplest bud that blows,
I love the meanest weed that grows:
Symbols of nature--every form
That speaks of her this heart can warm;
But ye, delicious flowers, assume
In fancy's eye a brighter bloom;
A dearer pleasure ye diffuse,
Cull'd by the fountain of Vaucluse!

For ye were nurtur'd on the sod