SONG. Dorinda's sparkling wit and eyes Love is a calmer, gentler joy, Smooth are his looks, and soft his pace, Her Cupid is a blackguard boy, That runs his link full in your face. SONG. Phillis, for shame, let us improve A thousand different ways Those few short moments snatched by love From many tedious days. If you want courage to despise The censure of the grave, Though love's a tyrant in your eyes Your heart is but a slave. My love is full of noble pride, To let that fop, Discretion, ride In triumph over it. False friends I have, as well as you, Who daily counsel me Fame and ambition to pursue, And leave off loving thee. But when the least regard I show May I be dull enough to grow Most miserably wise. SIR CHARLES SEDLEY. [SIR CHARLES SEDLEY was born at Aylesford in 1639, and died August 25, 1701. His most famous comedy, The Mulberry Garden, appeared in 1668; his poetical and dramatic works were collected in 1719.] Sedley was one of the most graceful and refined of the mob of Restoration noblemen who wrote in prose and verse. For nearly forty years he was recognised as a patron of the art of poetry, and as an amateur of more than usual skill. Three times, at intervals of ten years, he produced a play in the taste of the age, and when his clever comedy of Bellamira was refused at the Duke's Theatre, on account of its intolerable indelicacy, he sulked for the remainder of his life, and left to his executors three more plays in manuscript. His songs are bright and lively, but inferior to those of Rochester in lyrical force. A certain sweetness of diction in his verse delighted his contemporaries, who praised his 'witchcraft' and his 'gentle prevailing art.' In his plays he seems to be successively inspired by Etheredge, Shadwell and Crowne. Two lines in his most famous song have preserved his reputation from complete decay. EDMUND W. GOSSE. SONG. Love still has something of the sea, They are becalm'd in clearest days, One while they seem to touch the port, At first disdain and pride they fear, By such degrees to joy they come, 'Tis cruel to prolong a pain, No less inhuman is. An hundred thousand oaths your fears Perhaps would not remove, And if I gazed a thousand years, I could no deeper love. 'Tis fitter much for you to guess But grant, oh! grant that happiness, SONG. [From The Mulberry Garden.] Ah! Chloris, that I now could sit When I the dawn used to admire VOL. II. Your charms in harmless childhood lay, But as your charms insensibly My passion with your beauty grew, Each gloried in their wanton part; Though now I slowly bend to love, If your fair self my chains approve Ee Lovers, like dying men, may well Since none alive can truly tell SONG. Phillis is my only joy, Faithless as the winds or seas, Sometimes cunning, sometimes coy, Yet she never fails to please; If with a frown I am cast down, And beguiling Makes me happier than before. Though alas! too late I find Nothing can her fancy fix, I can't get free,— She deceiving, I believing, What need lovers wish for more. |