Desires Government. WHERE Wit is over-rul'd by Will, What boots the cunning pilot's skill, To tell which way to shape their course, When he that steers will have his will, And drive them where he list perforce? So Reason shews the truth in vain Where fond Desire as king doth reign. An Altar and Sacrifice to Disdain, for freeing him from Love. My Muse, by thee restored to life, Yet living still: And last of all Blind Fancy's fire, False Beauty's thrall, That binds Desire: All these I offer to Disdain, By whom I live from Fancy free; Strephon's Palinode. SWEET, I do not pardon crave By deserts this fault amended: That your ire May with penance be suspended. Not my will, but fate did fetch Into this unhappy error; Which to plague, no tyrant's mind Like my heart's self-guilty terror. Then, O then! let that suffice, Your dear eyes Need not, need not more afflict me; Nor your sweet tongue dipt in gall Need at all From your presence interdict me. By my love, long, firm, and true, By these tears, my grief expressing, Pity me my fault confessing. May with penance be suspended; When I have With soon death my fault amended. A Fiction how Cupid made a Nymph wound herself with his arrows.* IT chanc'd of late a shepherd's swain, Within a thicket, on the plain, Her golden hair o'erspread her face, Her breast lay bare to every blast. * Erroneously ascribed in Dryden's Misc. (Vol. 4. 274.) to Sidney Godolphin, under the title of "Cupid s Pastime," The shepherd stood and gaz'd his fill, The crafty boy, that sees her sleep, There come, he steals her shafts away, But, ere she wakes, hies thence apace. Scarce was he gone when she awakes, Forth flew the shaft, and pierc'd his heart, That to the ground he fell with pain; Yet up again forthwith he start, And to the nymph he ran amain. Amaz'd to see so strange a sight, |