Anonymous. Ranging the Plain One Summer's Night. T.R. Smith, ed. 1921-22. Poetica Erotica: A Collection of Rare and Curious Amatory Verse

T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.

Ranging the Plain One Summer’s Night

Anonymous

(From Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1719)

RANGING the Plain one Summer’s night,
To pass a vacant hour,
I fortunately chanced to light,
On lovely Phillis’s Bow’r,
The Nymph adorn’d with thousand Charms,	5
In expectation sate,
To meet those Joys in Strephon’s Arms,
Which Tongue cannot relate.

Upon her Hand she leaned her Head,
Her breast did gently rise;	10
That ev’ry Lover might have read,
Her Wishes in her Eyes;
At ev’ry Breath that moved the Trees,
She suddenly would start;
A cold on all her Body seized,	15
A trembling on her Heart.

But he that knew how well she Loved,
Beyond this hour has stay’d;
And both with Fear and Anger moved,
The melancholy Maid:	20
Ye Gods, she said, how oft he swore,
He would be here by One;
But now alas! ’tis Six and more,
And yet he is not come.