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| DEAR CHLOE, how blubber’d is that pretty face! | |
| Thy cheek all on fire, and thy hair all uncurl’d: | |
| Pr’ythee quit this caprice; and, as old Falstaff says, | |
| Let us e’er talk a little like folks of this world. | |
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| How canst thou presume, thou hast leave to destroy | 5 |
| The beauties which Venus but lent to thy keeping? | |
| Those looks were design’d to inspire love and joy; | |
| More ordinary eyes may serve people for weeping. | |
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| To be vext at a trifle or two that I writ, | |
| Your judgment at once, and my passion, you wrong: | 10 |
| You take that for fact, which will scarce be found wit; | |
| Ods life! must one swear to the truth of a song? | |
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| What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows | |
| The difference there is betwixt nature and art: | |
| I court others in verse—but I love thee in prose; | 15 |
| And they have my whimsies—but thou hast my heart. | |
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| The God of us verse-men (you know, child) the Sun, | |
| How after his journeys he sets up his rest: | |
| If at morning o’er Earth ’t is his fancy to run; | |
| At night he declines on his Thetis’ breast. | 20 |
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| So when I am wearied with wandering all day; | |
| To thee, my delight, in the evening I come: | |
| No matter what beauties I saw in my way: | |
| They were but visits, but thou art my home. | |
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| Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war; | 25 |
| And let us like Horace and Lydia agree; | |
| For thou art a girl as much brighter than her, | |
| As he was a poet sublimer than me. | |
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