The neighb'ring mountains which you shall Woo to oppress you with their weight, Disdainful will deny to fall;

By a sad death to ease your fate.

In vain some midnight storm at sea
To swallow you, you will desire :
In vain upon the wheel you'll pray
Broken with torments to expire.

Death, at the sight of which you start,
In a mad fury then you'll court :
Yet hate th' expressions of your heart,
Which only shall be sighed for sport.

No sorrow then shall enter in
With pity the great judge's ears.

This moment's ours. Once dead, his sin
Man cannot expiate with tears.

ANONYMOUS.

Probably of the Seventeenth Century.

IT IS NOT BEAUTY I DEMAND.

T is not beauty I demand,

IT

A crystal brow, the moon's despair,

Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand,
Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair.

Tell me not of your starry eyes,

Your lips, that seem on roses fed, Your breasts, where Cupid tumbling lies, Nor sleeps for kissing of his bed,—

A bloomy pair of vermeil cheeks,
Like Hebe's in her ruddiest hours,
A breath that softer music speaks

Than summer winds a-wooing flowers.

These are but gauds: nay, what are lips?
Coral beneath the ocean-stream,
Whose brink when your adventurer slips
Full oft he perisheth on them.

And what are cheeks, but ensigns oft
That wave hot youth to fields of blood?
Did Helen's breast, though ne'er so soft,
Do Greece or Ilium any good?

Eyes can with baleful ardour burn;

Poison can breath, that erst perfumed, There's many a white hand holds an urn, With lovers' hearts to dust consumed.

For crystal brows, there's nought within;
They are but empty cells for pride;
He who the Siren's hair would win,
Is mostly strangled in the tide.

Give me, instead of Beauty's bust,
A tender heart, a loyal mind,
Which with temptation I would trust,
Yet never linked with error find,-

One in whose gentle bosom I

Could pour my secret heart of woes,

Like the care-burthened honey-fly,
That hides his murmurs in the rose,-

My earthly comforter! whose love
So indefeasible might be,
That when my spirit wonned above,

Hers could not stay, for sympathy.