| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909. | | | | Verses: ‘Why write my name ’midst songs and flowers’ | | By Francis Jeffrey (1773–1850) |
| | | WHY write my name ’midst songs and flowers, | |
| To meet the eye of lady gay? | |
| I have no voice for lady’s bowers— | |
| For page like this no fitting lay. | |
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| Yet tho’ my heart no more must bound | 5 |
| At witching call of sprightly joys, | |
| Mine is the brow that never frown’d | |
| On laughing lips, or sparkling eyes. | |
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| No—though behind me now is clos’d | |
| The youthful paradise of Love, | 10 |
| Yet can I bless, with soul compos’d, | |
| The lingerers in that happy grove! | |
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| Take, then, fair girls, my blessing take! | |
| Where’er amid its charms you roam; | |
| Or where, by western hill or lake, | 15 |
| You brighten a serener home. | |
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| And while the youthful lover’s name | |
| Here with the sister beauty’s blends, | |
| Laugh not to scorn the humbler aim, | |
| That to their list would add a friend’s! | 20 | | | |
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