BE not proud, but now incline
Your soft ear to discipline;
You have changes in your life,
Sometimes peace, and sometimes strife;
You have ebbs of face and flows,
As your health or comes or goes ;
You have hopes, and doubts, and fears,
Numberless as are your hairs;
You have pulses that do beat
High, and passions less of heat;
You are young, but must be old :—
And, to these, ye must be told,
Time, ere long, will come and plow
Loathéd furrows in your brow :
And the dimness of your eye
Will no other thing imply,
But you must die
UPON MRS ELIZ. WHEELER, UNDER THE NAME OF
SWEET Amarillis, by a spring's
Soft and soul-melting murmurings,
Slept; and thus sleeping, thither flew
A Robin-red-breast; who at view,
Not seeing her at all to stir,
Brought leaves and moss to cover her :
But while he, perking, there did pry
About the arch of either eye,
The lid began to let out day,—
At which poor Robin flew away;
And seeing her not dead, but all disleaved, He chirpt for joy, to see himself deceived.
No fault in women, to refuse
The offer which they most would chuse.
-No fault in women, to confess
How tedious they are in their dress;
-No fault in women, to lay on
The tincture of vermilion ;
And there to give the cheek a dye
Of white, where Nature doth deny.
-No fault in women, to make show
Of largeness, when they're nothing so ;
When, true it is, the outside swells
With inward buckram, little else.
-No fault in women, though they be
But seldom from suspicion free;
-No fault in womankind at all,
If they but slip, and never fall.
ABOUT the sweet bag of a bee
Two Cupids fell at odds;
And whose the pretty prize should be
They vow'd to ask the Gods.
Which Venus hearing, thither came,
And for their boldness stript them;
And taking thence from each his flame,
With rods of myrtle whipt them.
Which done, to still their wanton cries,
When quiet grown she'd seen them,
She kiss'd and wiped their dove-like eyes,
And gave the bag between them.
THE PRESENT: OR, THE BAG OF THE BEE
FLY to my mistress, pretty pilfering bee,
And say, thou bring'st this honey-bag from me;
When on her lip thou hast thy sweet dew placed,
Mark if her tongue but slyly steal a taste;
If so, we live; if not, with mournful hum,
Tell forth my death; next, to my burial come.
TO THE WATER-NYMPHS DRINKING AT THE
REACH with your whiter hands to me
Some crystal of the spring;
And I about the cup shall see
Fresh lilies flourishing.
Or else, sweet nymphs, do you but this-
To th' glass your lips incline ;
And I shall see by that one kiss
The water turn'd to wine.
THESE springs were maidens once that loved
But lost to that they most approved :
My story tells, by Love they were
Turn'd to these springs which we see here:
The pretty whimpering that they make,
When of the banks their leave they take,
Tells ye but this, they are the same,
In nothing changed but in their name.
TO THE HANDSOME MISTRESS GRACE POTTER
As is your name, so is your comely face
Touch'd every where with such diffuséd grace,
As that in all that admirable round,
There is not one least solecism found;
And as that part, so every portion else
Keeps line for line with beauty's parallels.
WHEN I love, as some have told
Love I shall, when I am old,
O ye Graces! make me fit
For the welcoming of it!
Clean my rooms, as temples be,
To entertain that deity;
Give me words wherewith to woo,
Suppling and successful too;
Winning postures; and withal,
Manners each way musical 1;
Sweetness to allay my sour
And unsmooth behaviour:
For I know you have the skill
Vines to prune, though not to kill,
And of any wood ye see,
You can make a Mercury.
|