How should I thy sweet commune prize, And other joys despise; Come, then, I ne'er was yet denied by thee. I would not long detain Thy soul from bliss, nor keep thee here in pain; Nor should thy fellow-saints e'er know Of thy escape below; Before thou 'rt missed, thou shouldst return again. Sure Heaven must needs thy love, As well as other qualities, improve; Come, then, and recreate my sight With rays of thy pure light; 'T will cheer my eyes more than the lamps above. But if Fate's so severe As to confine thee to thy blissful sphere, (And by thy absence I shall know Whether thy state be so,) Live happy, and be mindful of me there. THOMAS PARNELL. 1679-1718. MISS ANNE MINCHIN was the heroine of these two songs. The first was probably written during Parnell's courtship, the last after she became his wife. He married her in 1705, when he was archdeacon of Clogher, in Ireland. She bore him three children, two sons and a daughter, and died in 1711. "I am heartily sorry for poor Mrs. Parnell's death," Swift wrote, in his Journal to Stella. "She seemed to be an excellent, good-natured young woman, and I believe the poor lad is much afflicted." "The death of his wife," says Goldsmith, "was a loss to him that he was unable to support or recover. From that time he could never venture to court the muse in solitude, where he was sure to find the image of her who inspired his attempts. He began, therefore, to throw himself into every company, and to seek from wine, if not relief, at least insensibility. Those helps that sorrow first called for assistance, habit soon rendered necessary, and he died before his fortieth year, in some measure a martyr to conjugal fidelity." SONG. My days have been so wondrous free, With careless ease from tree to tree, Ask gliding waters, if a tear Of mine increased their stream? Or ask the flying gales, if e'er But now my former days retire, Are fixed upon my thought. Ye nightingales, ye twisting pines! With all of nature, all of art, The very thought of change I hate, Nor ever covet to be great, 'Tis true, the passion in my mind I cannot wish it less. SONG. When thy beauty appears, In its graces and airs, All bright as an angel new dropped from the sky; So strangely you dazzle my eye! But when without art, Your kind thoughts you impart, When your love runs in blushes through every vein; When it darts from your eyes, when it pants in your heart, There's a passion and pride In our sex, she replied, And thus (might I gratify both) I would do; Still an angel appear to each lover beside, MATTHEW PRIOR. 1664-1721. "PRIOR was not a right good man," Pope is made to say in Spence's Anecdotes. "He used to bury himself, for whole days and nights together, with a poor mean creature, and often drank hard. He left most of his effects to the poor woman he kept company with, his Chloe; everybody knows what a wretch she was. I think she had been a little alehouse-keeper's wife." "This celebrated lady," Spence added in a note, “is now married to a cobbler at ****" "Prior had a narrow escape by dying," Arbuthnot wrote to a friend, "for if he had lived he had married a brimstone one Bessy Cox, that keeps an alehouse in Long Acre. Her husband died about a month ago, and Prior has left his estate between his servant, Jonathan Drift, and Bessy Cox. Lewis got drunk with punch with Bess night before last. Do not say where you had this news of Prior. I hope all my mistress' ministers will not behave themselves so. We are to have a bowl of punch at Bessy Cox's. She would fain have put it upon Lewis that she was his Emma. She owned Flanders Jane was his Chloe. I know of no security against this dotage in bachelors, but to repent of their misspent time, and marry with speed." AN ODE. The merchant, to secure his treasure, My softest verse, my darling lyre, When Cloe noted her desire, That I should sing, that I should play. My lyre I tune, my voice I raise, But with my numbers mix my sighs; Fair Cloe blushed: Euphelia frowned: I sung and gazed: I played and trembled: And Venus to the Loves around Remarked, how ill we all dissembled. TO CLOE WEEPING. See, while thou weep'st, fair Cloe, see Each droops his head, and hangs his wing. A SONG. If wine and music have the power |