THIRSIS.
E’er the sun drank of
the cold morning dew,
I’ve known thee early the tuskt
boar pursue:
Then in the evening drive the bear away,
And rescue from his jaws the trembling
prey.
But now thy flocks creep feebly through
the fields,
No purple grapes, thy half-drest vineyards
yields:
No primrose nor no violets grace thy beds,
But thorns and thistles lift their prickly
heads.
What means this change?
STREPHON
&nb
sp; Enquire
no more;
When none can heal, ’tis pain to
search the sore;
Bright Galatea, in whose matchless face
Sat rural innocence, with heavenly grace;
In whose no less inimitable mind,
With equal light, even distant virtues
shin’d;
Chaste without pride, and charming without
art,
Honour the tyrant of her tender heart:
Fair goddess of these fields, who for
our sports,
Though she might well become, neglected
courts:
Belov’d of all, and loving me alone,
Is from my sight, I fear, for ever gone.
THIRSIS.
Thy case indeed is pitiful,
but yet
Thou on thy loss too great a price dost
set.
Women like days are, Strephon, some be
far
More bright and glorious than others are:
Yet none so gay, so temperate, so clear,
But that the like adorn the rowling year,
Pleasures imparted to a friend, increase,
Perhaps divided sorrow may grow less.
Strephon.
Others as fair, to others
eyes may seem,
But she has all my love and my esteem:
Her bright idea wanders in my thought,
At once my poison, and my antidote.
THIRSIS.
Our hearts are paper, beauty
is the pen,
Which writes our loves, and blots ’em
out agen.
Phillis is whiter than the rising swan,
Her slender waist confin’d within
a span:
Charming as nature’s face in the
new spring,
When early birds on the green branches
sing.
When rising herbs and buds begin to hide,
Their naked mother, with their short-liv’d
pride,
Chloe is ripe, and as the autumn fair,
When on the elm the purple grapes appear,
When trees, hedge-rows, and every bending
bush,
With rip’ning fruit, or tasteful
berries blush,
Lydia is in the summer of her days,
What wood can shade us from her piercing
rays?
Her even teeth, whiter than new yean’d
lambs,
When they with tender cries pursue their
dams.
Her eyes as charming as the evening sun,
To the scorch’d labourer when his
work is done,
Whom the glad pipe, to rural sports invites,
And pays his toil with innocent delights.
On some of these fond swain fix thy desire,
And burn not with imaginary fire.
Strephon.
The flag shall sooner with
the eagle soar,
Seas leave their fishes naked on the shore;
The wolf shall sooner by the lamkin die,
And from the kid the hungry lion fly,
Than I abandon Galatea’s love,
Or her dear image from my thoughts remove.