After the pangs of a desperate lover,

Undone by your virtue, too strict and severe,Your eyes gave me love, and you gave me despair:Now called by my honour, I seek with contentThe fate which in pity you would not prevent:To languish in love were to find, by delay,A death that’s more welcome the speediest way.On seas and in battles, in bullets and…

For six long years immured, the captive knightHad dragged his chains, and scarcely seen the light:Lost liberty and love at once he bore;His prison pained him much, his passion more:Nor dares he hope his fetters to remove,Nor ever wishes to be free from love.But when the sixth revolving year was run,And May within the Twins…

She had heard of a pleasure, and something she guessedBy the towsing and tumbling and touching her breast:She saw the men eager, but was at a lossWhat they meant by their sighing and kissing so close;By their praying and whining,And clasping and twining,And panting and wishing,And sighing and kissing,And sighing and kissing so close.‘Ah!’ she…

Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay:To-morrow’s falser than the former day;Lies worse; and while it says, we shall be blessedWith some new joys, cuts off what we possessed.Strange cozenage! none would live past years again,Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;And, from the dregs of life, think to receiveWhat the first sprightly running…

Because the muse has peopled CaledonWith panthers, bears, and wolves, and beasts unknown,As if we were not stocked with monsters of our own.Let Æsop answer, who has set to viewSuch kinds as Greece and Phrygia never knew;And Mother Hubbard, in her homely dress,Has sharply blamed a British lioness;That queen, whose feast the factious rabble keep,Exposed…

Thou youngest Virgin Daughter of the skies,Made in the last promotion of the blest;Whose palms, new-plucked from Paradise,In spreading branches more sublimely rise,Rich with immortal green, above the rest:Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,Thou roll’st above us in thy wand’ring race,Or, in procession fixed and regularMoved with the heavens’ majestic pace;Or, called to more superior…