To My Inconstant Mistress

"How ill doth he deserve a lovers name,     Whose pale weak flame     Cannot retain     His heat, in spite of absence or disdain;     But doth"

"'Tis true, dear Ben, thy just chastising hand     Hath fix'd upon the sotted age a brand     To their swoll'n pride and empty scribbling due;"

"If the quick spirits in your eye     Now languish and anon must die;     If every sweet and every grace     Must fly from that forsaken face;"

"This little vault, this narrow room,     Of Love and Beauty is the tomb;     The dawning beam, that 'gan to clear     Our clouded sky, lies dar"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"