Beauty like a shadow flies,
And our Youth before us dies.
Or would youth and Beauty stay,
Love has wings, and will away.
Love has swifter wings than Time;
Change in love to heaven does climb:
Gods, that never change their state,
Vary oft their love and hate.
Phillis, to this truth we owe
All the love betwixt us two.
Let not you and I require
What has been our past desire;
On what shepherds you have smil'd,
Or what nymphs I have beguil❜d.
Leave it to the planets too
What we shall hereafter do:
For the joys we now may prove
Take advice of present Love.
THAT which her slender waist confin'd
Shall now my joyful temples bind:
No monarch but would give his crown,
His arms might do what this has done.
It was my heaven's extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer:
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,
Did all within this circle move!
A narrow compass! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair :
Give me but what this ribbon bound;
Take all the rest the sun goes round.
To the mutable Fair.
HERE, Cælia, for thy sake I part
With all that grew so near my heart;
The passion that I had for thee,
The faith, the love, the constancy :
And, that I may successful prove,
Transform myself to what you love!
Fool that I was! so much to prize
Those simple virtues you despise!
Fool! that with such dull arrows strove,
Or hop'd to reach a flying dove!
For you, that are in motion still,
Decline our force, and mock our skill,
Who, like Don Quixote, do advance
Against a windmill our vain lance.
Now will I wander through the air, Mount, make a stoop at every fair, And, with a fancy unconfin❜d, As lawless as the sea or wind, Pursue you wheresoe'er you fly, And with your various thoughts comply.
The formal stars do travel so
As we their names and courses know;
And he that on their changes looks,
Would think them govern'd by our books.
But never were the clouds reduc'd
To any art: the motion us'd
By those free vapours is so light,
So frequent, that the conquer'd sight
Despairs to find the rules that guide
Those gilded shadows as they slide.
And therefore of the spacious air
Jove's royal consort had the care;
And by that power did once escape,
Declining bold Ixion's rape :
She with her own resemblance grac'd
A shining cloud, which he embrac❜d.
Such was that image, so it smil'd With seeming kindness, which beguil'd Your Thyrsis lately, when he thought He had his fleeting Cælia caught; 'Twas shap'd like her, but for the fair He fill'd his arms with yielding air.
A fate for which he grieves the less, Because the gods had like success. For in their story, one, we see, Pursues a nymph, and takes a tree. A second with a lover's haste Soon overtakes whom he had chas'd; But she that did a virgin seem, Possess'd, appears a wandering stream. For his supposed love, a third
Lays greedy hold upon a bird,
And stands amaz'd to find his dear
A wild inhabitant of th' air.
To these old tales such nymphs as you Give credit, and still make them new. The amorous now like wonders find In the swift changes of your mind.
But, Cælia, if you apprehend The Muse of your incensed friend,
Nor would that he record your blame,
And make it live ;-repeat the same:
Again deceive him, and again,
And then he swears he'll not complain.
For still to be deluded so
Is all the pleasure lovers know;
Who, like good falconers, take delight
Not in the quarry, but the flight.
To a Lady in a Garden.
SEES not my love how Time resumes
The glory which he lent these flowers?
Though none should taste of their perfumes,
Yet must they live but some few hours.
Time what we forbear devours.
Had Helen, or th' Egyptian queen,
Been ne'er so thrifty of their graces,
Those beauties must at length have been
The spoil of Age, which finds out faces
In the most retired places.
Should some malignant planet bring
A barren drought or ceaseless shower
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