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To Heav'n's own master-piece of man;
And finishest what nature but began:
Thy happy stroke can into softness bring
Reason, that rough and wrangling thing.
From childhood upwards we decay,
And grow but greater children ev'ry day:
So, Reason, how can we be faid to rife?
So many cares attend the being wise,
'Tis rather falling down a precipice.
From Sense to Reason unimprov'd we move ;

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We only then advance, when Reason turns to Love.

IV.

Thou reigneft o'er our earthly Gods;
Uncrown'd by thee, their other crowns are loads;
One beauty's smile their meanest courtier brings
Rather to pity than to envy Kings;

His fellow flaves he takes them now to be,
Favour'd by love perhaps much less than he,
For love, the tim'rous bashful maid

Of nothing but denying is afraid;

For love the overcomes her shame, Forfakes her fortune, and forgets her fame; Yet, if but with a constant lover blest, Thanks Heav'n for that, and never minds the rest,

V.

Love is the falt of life; a higher taste
It gives to pleasure, and then makes it laft.

Thofe flighted favours which cold nymphs dispense,
Mere common counters of the sense,
Defective both in mettle and in measure,

A lover's fancy coins into a treasure.
How vaft the fubject! what a boundless store
Of bright ideas, fhining all before

The mufes fight, forbids me to give o'er !
But the kind God excites us various ways,
And now I find him all ardor raise,

my

His precepts to perform, as well as praise.

ELE GY

TO THE

DUTCHESS of R

TH

HOU lovely flave to a rude husband's will,
By Nature us'd fo well, by him fo ill!
For all that grief we see your mind endure,
Your glafs prefents you with a pleafing cure.
Those maids you envy for their happier state,
To have your form, would gladly have your fate;
And of like flavery each wife complains,

Without fuch beauty's help to bear her chains.
Husbands like him we ev'ry-where may fee;
But where can we behold a wife like thee?
While to a tyrant you by fate are ty'd,
By love you tyrannize o'er all befide:
Those eyes, tho' weeping, can no pity move;
Worthy our grief! more worthy of our love!
You, while fo fair (do fortune what she please)
Can be no more in pain, than we at ease:
Unless, unfatisfied with all our vows,
Your vain ambition fo unbounded grows,
That you repine a husband should escape
Th' united force of fuch a face and shape.
If fo, alas! for all thofe charming pow'rs,
Your cafe is just as desperate as ours.

Expect that birds fhould only fing to you,
And, as you walk, that ev'ry tree fhould bow;
Expect those statues, as you pass, should burn;
And that with wonder men fhould ftatues turn;
Such beauty is enough to give things life,
But not to make a husband love his wife:
A husband, worse than statues, or than trees;
Colder than thofe, lefs fenfible than these.
Then from fo dull a care your thoughts remove,
And waste not fighs you only owe to love.
'Tis pity, fighs from fuch a breaft should part,
Unless to eafe fome doubtful lover's heart;
Who dies because he must too justly prize
What yet the dull poffeffor does defpife.
Thus precious jewels among Indians grow,
Who nor their use, nor wondrous value know;
But we for those bright treasures tempt the main,
And hazard life for what the fools difdain.

C

A LETTER from SEA.

FAIREST, if time and abfence can incline

Your heart to wand'ring thoughts no more than
mine;

Then fhall my hand, as changelefs as my mind,
From your glad eyes a kindly welcome find;
Then, while this note my constancy affures,
You'll be almost as pleas'd, as I with yours.
And trust me, when I feel that kind relief,
Abfence itself a while fufpends its grief:
So may it do with you, but straight return;
For it were cruel not fometimes to mourn
His fate, who this long time he keeps away,
Mourns all the night, and fighs out all the day;
Grieving yet more, when he reflects that you
Muft not be happy, or must not be true.
But fince to me it seems a blacker fate
To be inconftant, than unfortunate;
Remember all those vows between us past,
When I from all I value parted last;
May you alike with kind impatience burn,
And fomething mifs, till I with joy return;
And foon may pitying Heav'n that bleffing give,
As in the hopes of that alone I live.

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