| |
| DEAR little, pretty, favourite ore, | |
| That once increas’d Gloriana’s store | |
| That lay within her bosom bless’d, | |
| Gods might have envied thee thy nest. | |
| I’ve read, imperial Jove of old | 5 |
| For love transform’d himself to gold: | |
| And why, for a more lovely lass, | |
| May he not now have lurk’d in brass; | |
| Oh! rather than from her he’d part, | |
| He’d shut that charitable heart, | 10 |
| That heart whose goodness nothing less | |
| Than his vast power, could dispossess. | |
| From Gloriana’s gentle touch | |
| Thy mighty value now is such, | |
| That thou to me art worth alone | 15 |
| More than his medals are to Sloan. | |
| Not for the silver and the gold | |
| Which Corinth lost should’st thou be sold: | |
| Not for the envied mighty mass | |
| Which misers wish, or M—h has: | 20 |
| Not for what India sends to Spain, | |
| Nor all the riches of the Main. | |
| While I possess thy little store, | |
| Let no man call, or think, me poor; | |
| Thee, while alive, my breast shall have, | 25 |
| My hand shall grasp thee in the grave: | |
| Nor shalt thou be to Peter given | |
| Tho’ he should keep me out of heaven. | |
| |
