| J. C. Squire, ed. A Book of Women’s Verse. 1921. | | | | Song: “Cease, cease, Aminta, to complain” | | By Aphra Behn (1640–1689) |
| | | CEASE, cease, Aminta, to complain, | |
| Thy languishments give o’er, | |
| Why should’st thou sigh because the swain | |
| Another does adore? | |
| Those charms, fond maid, that vanquish’d thee, | 5 |
| Have many a conquest won, | |
| And sure he could not cruel be | |
| And leave ’em all undone. | |
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| The youth a noble temper bears, | |
| Soft and compassionate, | 10 |
| And thou canst only blame thy stars, | |
| That made thee love too late; | |
| Yet had their influence all been kind | |
| They had not cross’d my fate, | |
| The tenderest hours must have an end, | 15 |
| And passion has its date. | |
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| The softest love grows cold and shy, | |
| The face so late ador’d | |
| Now unregarded passes by, | |
| Or grows at last abhorr’d; | 20 |
| All things in Nature fickle prove, | |
| See how they glide away; | |
| Think so in time thy hopeless love | |
| Will die, as flowers decay. | | | | |
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