| |
| DEAR Chloe, how blubbered is that pretty face! | |
| Thy cheek all on fire, and thy hair all uncurled! | |
| Prithee quit this caprice, and (as old Falstaff says) | |
| Let us e’en talk a little like folks of this world. | |
| |
| How canst thou presume thou hast leave to destroy | 5 |
| The beauties, which Venus but lent to thy keeping? | |
| Those looks were designed to inspire love and joy; | |
| More ord’nary eyes may serve people for weeping. | |
| |
| To be vexed at a trifle or two that I writ, | |
| Your judgment at once and my passion you wrong; | 10 |
| You take that for fact which will scarce be found wit: | |
| Od’s life! must one swear to the truth of a song? | |
| |
| What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows | |
| The diff’rence there is betwixt nature and art: | |
| I court others in verse, but I love thee in prose; | 15 |
| And they have my whimsies, but thou hast my heart. | |
| |
| The god of us verse-men (you know, child), the sun, | |
| How after his journeys he sets up his rest; | |
| At morning o’er earth ’t is his fancy to run, | |
| If at night he reclines on his Thetis’s breast. | 20 |
| |
| So when I am wearied with wand’ring all day, | |
| To thee, my delight, in the evening I come: | |
| No matter what beauties I saw in my way; | |
| They were but my visits, but thou art my home. | |
| |
| Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war, | 25 |
| And let us like Horace and Lydia agree; | |
| For thou art a girl as much brighter than her | |
| As he was a poet sublimer than me. | |
| |
