
   In the mirth-loving chorus to join:
Ah, me! how unweeting the while!
   LAVINIA - can never be mine!

Another, more happy, the maid
   By fortune is destin’d to bless -
’Tho’ the hope has forsook that betray’d,
   Yet why should I love her the less?

Her beauties are bright as the morn,
   With rapture I counted them o’er;
Such virtues these beauties adorn,
   I knew her, and prais’d them no more.

I term’d her no goddess of love,
   I call’d not her beauty divine:
These far other passions may prove,
   But they could not be figures of mine.

It ne’er was apparel’d with art,
   On words it could never rely;
It reign’d in the throb of my heart,
   It gleam’d in the glance of my eye.

Oh fool! in the circle to shine
   That Fashion’s gay daughters approve,
You must speak as the fashions incline;
   Alas! are there fashions in love?

Yet sure they are simple who prize
   The tongue that is smooth to deceive;
Yet sure she had sense to despise,
   The tinsel that folly may weave.

When I talk’d, I have seen her recline,
   With an aspect so pensively sweet, -
Tho’ I spoke what the shepherds opine,
   A fop were ashamed to repeat.

She is soft as the dew-drops that fall
   From the lip of the sweet-scented pea;
Perhaps when she smil’d upon all,
   I have thought that she smil’d upon me.

But why of her charms should I tell?
   Ah me! whom her charms have undone
Yet I love the reflection too well,
   The painful reflection to shun.

Ye souls of more delicate kind,
   Who feast not on pleasure alone,
Who wear the soft sense of the mind,
   To the sons of the world still unknown.

Ye know, tho’ I cannot express,
   Why I foolishly doat on my pain;
Nor will ye believe it the less,
   That I have not the skill to complain.

I lean on my hand with a sigh,
   My friends the soft sadness condemn;
Yet, methinks, tho’ I cannot tell why,
   I should hate to be merry like them.

When I walk’d in the pride of the dawn,
   Methought all the region look’d bright:
Has sweetness forsaken the lawn?
   For, methinks, I grow sad at the sight.

When I stood by the stream, I have thought
   There was mirth in the gurgling soft sound;
But now ’tis a sorrowful note,
   And the banks are all gloomy around!

I have laugh’d at the jest of a friend;
   Now they laugh, and I know not the cause,
Tho’
