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, And drive them where he list perforce? An Altar and Sacrifice to Disdain, for freeing him from Love. My Muse, by thee restored to life, Hate for good will, Yet living still: 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: 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, Need not, need not more afflict me; From Need at all your presence interdict me. By my love, long, firm, and true, By these tears, my grief expressing, Pity me my fault confessing. Or, if I may not desire May with penance be suspended; 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, 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, Before her nap should ended be. 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, Yet up again forthwith he start, And to the nymph he ran amain, Amaz❜d to see so strange a sight, She shot, and shot, but all in vain ; |