| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910. | | | | Song: ‘O Love! that stronger art than wine’ | | By Aphra Behn (1640–1689) |
| | | O LOVE! 1 that stronger art than wine, | |
| Pleasing delusion, witchery divine, | |
| Wont to be prized above all wealth, | |
| Disease that has more joys than health; | |
| Though we blaspheme thee in our pain, | 5 |
| And of thy tyranny complain, | |
| We are all bettered by thy reign. | |
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| What reason never can bestow | |
| We to this useful passion owe: | |
| Love wakes the dull from sluggish ease, | 10 |
| And learns a clown the art to please, | |
| Humbles the vain, kindles the cold, | |
| Makes misers free, and cowards bold; | |
| ’Tis he reforms the sot from drink, | |
| And teaches airy fops to think. | 15 |
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| When full brute appetite is fed, | |
| And choked the glutton lies and dead, | |
| Thou new spirits dost dispense | |
| And finest the gross delights of sense: | |
| Virtue’s unconquerable aid | 20 |
| That against Nature can persuade, | |
| And makes a roving mind retire | |
| Within the bounds of just desire; | |
| Cheerer of age, youth’s kind unrest, | |
| And half the heaven of the blest! | 25 |
| | | Note 1. From The Lucky Chance, act iii, sc. 1. 1687. [back] | | |
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