[Tea-Table Miscellany Contents]
ONE evening as I lay
A-musing in a grove,
A nymph exceeding gay
Came there to seek her love;
But finding not her swain,
She sat her down to grieve,
And thus she did complain,
How men her sex deceive.
–
Believing maids, take care
Of false deluding men,
Whose pride is to ensnare
Each female that they can:
My perjur’d swain he swore
A thousand oaths, to prove
(As many have done before)
How true he’d be to love.
–
Then virgins, for my sake,
Ne’er trust false man again,
The pleasure we partake,
Ne’er answers half the pain;
Uncertain as the seas,
Is their unconstant mind,
At once they burn or freeze,
Still changing like the wind.
–
When she had told her tale,
Compassion seiz’d my heart,
And Cupid did prevail
With me, to take her part:
Then bowing to the fair,
I made my kind address,
And vow’d to bear a share
In her unhappiness.
–
Surpris’d at first she rose,
And strove from me to fly:
I told her I’d disclose
For grief a remedy.
Then, with a smiling look,
Said she, to asswage the storm,
I doubt you’ve undertook
A task you can’t perform.
–
Since proof convinces best,
Fair maid believe it true,
That rage is but a jest,
To what revenge can do:
Then serve him in his kind,
And fit the fool again;
Such charms were ne’er design’d,
For such a faithless swain.
–
I courted her with care,
Till her soft soul gave way,
And from her breast so fair,
Stole the sweet heart away:
Then she with smiles confess’d,
Her mind felt no more pain,
While she was thus caress’d,
By such a lovely swain.
