C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Disappointment
By William Shenstone (1714–1763)
Y
And take no more heed of my sheep:
They have nothing to do but to stray,
I have nothing to do but to weep.
Yet do not my folly reprove:
She was fair—and my passion begun;
She smiled—and I could not but love;
She is faithless—and I am undone.
Perhaps it was plain to foresee
That a nymph so complete would be sought
By a swain more engaging than me.
Ah! love every hope can inspire:
It banishes wisdom the while,
And the lip of the nymph we admire
Seems forever adorned with a smile.
Ye that witness the woes I endure,
Let reason instruct you to shun
What it cannot instruct you to cure.
Beware how you loiter in vain
Amid nymphs of a higher degree:
It is not for me to explain
How fair and how fickle they be.
What hope of an end to my woes,
When I cannot endure to forget
The glance that undid my repose?
Yet time may diminish the pain;
The flower, and the shrub, and the tree,
Which I reared for her pleasure in vain,
In time may have comfort for me.
The sound of a murmuring stream,
The peace which from solitude flows,
Henceforth shall be Corydon’s theme.
High transports are shown to the sight,
But we’re not to find them our own:
Fate never bestowed such delight
As I with my Phyllis had known.
To your deepest recesses I fly;
I would hide with the beasts of the chase,
I would vanish from every eye.
Yet my reed shall resound through the grove
With the same sad complaint it begun:
How she smiled, and I could not but love!
Was faithless, and I am undone!