| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910. | | | | Song: ‘When on those lovely looks I gaze’ | | By John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) |
| | | WHEN on those lovely looks I gaze, | |
| To see a wretch pursuing, | |
| In raptures of a blest amaze, | |
| His pleasing happy ruin, | |
| ’Tis not for pity that I move; | 5 |
| His fate is too aspiring, | |
| Whose heart, broke with a load of love, | |
| Dies wishing and admiring. | |
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| But if this murder you’d forego, | |
| Your slave from death removing, | 10 |
| Let me your art of charming know, | |
| Or learn you mine of loving; | |
| But, whether life or death betide, | |
| In love ’tis equal measure, | |
| The victor lives with empty pride, | 15 |
| The vanquished dies with pleasure. | | | | |
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