Numbers in parentheses refer to
lines of the poems, those in brackets to endnotes. The poems by Rochester, Behn, and Etherege
follow the essay in the order in which they are discussed.
A significant portion of lyric poetry
concerns love, and the greater part focuses on the pains of love-longing. Few poems celebrate the joys of married life. Yet pitfalls exist for the lover apart from a
stand-offish beloved. Male impotence,
though it seems very nearly a human obsession to judge from the array of
nostrums (as well as legitimate medical interventions) that claim to treat it,
is rarely the subject of poetry. Indeed,
what the advertisements today call E. D. has been considered such a source of
shame that the very subject is often tabooed.
In poetry, of course, language mediates
the gap between the reader and experience, and there only rhetoric can
ameliorate the world’s woes. Restoration
poets in England, often following the lead of France, devised a variety of
strategies to confront sexual failure with language in a series of witty psychologically
and socially revealing “imperfect enjoyment” poems [1]. In literary terms, these works represent yet
another case of the transformation of convention, illustrating the generative
possibilities of literary convention.
While maintaining the same narrative and sharing significant elements of
tradition, each seventeenth century poet used rhetoric to develop a distinct
tone accompanying significantly different thematic implications.
In the Ovidian model for these
impotence poems [2] the persona, while boasting of past sexual performances,
finds himself at a loss. He considers
whether he might be the victim of magical spells [3], a likelihood the lady
endorses, though she suggests the real reason may be his having just had sex
with someone else. The poem ends with
her poised exit, comely yet as she exits, having given up and bid farewell to the
would-be lover. In spite of her
sprightly dismissal of her partner, the reader may infer a certain male
defensiveness in the posited causes for his failure. Neither a magic spell nor sexual exhaustion
impugn a man’s identity as simple impotence might, and the poem maintains a
tone of sophisticated play in spite of the man’s chagrin. In the end the woman’s unnecessary washing
indicates an agreement to keep the evening’s disappointment to themselves. As worldly lovers, they have experienced such
a scene before.
The seventeenth century writers who
composed what have come to be employ several different strategies to displace
the distress caused by impotence. In the
most well-known of these, the Earl of Rochester’s “The Imperfect Enjoyment,” the
most significant innovation is to describe the basic difficulty as a case of ejaculation
praecox rather than impotentia coeundi. Thus the problem may be ascribed in part to
an excess rather than a lack of erotic excitement. This crisis occurs in line fifteen of a
seventy-two line poem, allowing the author to spend his remaining rhetoric on
denouncing his unfaithful member, which he had mock-heroically praised as an “all-dissolving
thunderbolt.” (10) Though he had
earlier, with neo-Platonic language, expected his genitals to “convey my soul
up to her heart,” (13) (an inversion of the courtly concept of love entering at
the eyes), the lover’s sexual enthusiasm outlives his erection which has become
a “dead cinder” (33), a “withered flower.” (45)
Having fallen from Jovian lightning-dispensing power, his penis is now “a
rakehell villain who shrinks and hides his head” (57), a “base recreant” (61),
finally to appear entirely objectified, passive, and disagreeable, “a common
fucking-post” (63) for porcine whores to rub against.
Rochester’s poem concludes with a grandly
extravagant seven-line curse, a comic display in which he calls down venereal
disease upon his penis, condemning it never again even to piss. This malediction is animated by the speaker’s
libertinism, apparently undiminished even if he cannot personally participate. This motive, a kind of disembodied erotic
enthusiasm, blends with the blustering tone of an embarrassed sexual failure to
construct a sublimely comic picture of sexual ambition and the ridiculous
self-denunciation which at once foregrounds and covers his actual lack of
satisfactory performance. The poem may
be read as a satiric portrait of both the intensity of sexual desire and the
ludicrous male reaction to an encounter that becomes an embarrassing debacle.
Aphra Behn’s “The
Disappointment” resembles Rochester’s in theme and in the implication of
premature ejaculation. The lovers’
disappointment is attributed to an “Excess of Love” (88); he has been “or'e
ravish'd” (69), betrayed by “Pleasure, which too much Love destroys” (75).
. . . the
Shepherdesses Charms ;
Whose soft bewitching influence,
Had Damn’d him to the Hell of Impotence.
(138-140)
The tone, however, dramatically differs
from Rochester. In literary terms, in
spite of the reference to a “Shepherdess” (138), Rochester observes no pastoral
conventions, presenting his couple more or less realistically. Behn’s use of pastoral names for her couple
invokes a tradition in which love songs and songs of love-longing are common, a
tradition which makes ample allowance for satire as well. Her conclusion is a scene from Poussin with nymphs,
Daphne, Apollo, and Venus added to the use of “Shepherdess.” In this pretty confection the flurry of
references provides ironic distance from the bed, and vituperation, so
significant in Rochester’s poem, plays little role in Behn’s.
A more radical deviation, doubtless the aspect
attracting the most comment in recent years, is the greater complexity of the
woman’s psychology in “The Disappointment.”
Whereas neither Ovid nor Rochester contains any indication of reluctance
on the woman’s part, in Aphra Behn’s poem Cloris’ attitude is more
problematical. Though she submits
because she could “defend her self no longer” (4) and
she clearly declares that she might as well die as submit to his desire (29), she
still “permits his force” (14) and, indeed, seeks through her actions “to draw
him on” (17). This ambivalence is
consistent to the end, saying “Cease — cease” (25), yet “each touch” awakens “new
Desires” (35). On the one hand, the lovers are belligerents and her
body a besieged city, (“the Spoils and Trophies of the Enemy” [40]), yet
both are “in Transports” (53). She is a
sacrificial victim (46 and 58) yet she seeks to excite him (103) and finds his genitals like a betraying
“snake,” not for their threat but due to inability to perform (110). She feels in the end ambivalence, “Disdain and
Shame” (118) both because of the woman’s place in society which prizes chastity
in respectable women while valuing sexual “conquest” in men. Some critics have thought that the lady is
merely expressing conventional objections she does not feel, though it seems
far more likely that both her attraction and aversion toward sex are genuine
and well-justified, though contradictory.
Another variation is added to the structural
play of the transformation of convention with the playwright George Etherege’s
“The Imperfect Enjoyment” though the basic scenario is unchanged: the coming
together, the unsuccessful love-making, and the lady’s retreat. Her psychomachia over consent is dismissed as
a becoming pose of “modesty” (3), such that she resists “with pleasing force”
(2). His persona views the woman’s
actions as complex and dialectic; her eyes and her arms have different goals,
but the entire pursuit is thus rendered only the more titillating, the
revelation of her body becomes a lengthy tease, part of their sophisticated mutual
erotic game. [4] “To save a lily she
must lose a rose” (14). Yet, in the end,
when about to initiate intercourse, in the martial imagery absent in Ovid but
appearing in both Rochester and Behn, the lover finds himself “dead at the foot
of the surrender’d wall” (30).
Rather than generating a flow of invective
as in Rochester or the Classical pastoral tapestry woven by Behn, Etherege
exploits the situation to create neatly balanced rhetorical formulae, often
paradoxical after the manner of an Oscar Wilde play. The
effect is sparkling wit. Virtually
every line is a bipolar balance in partial self-contradiction. In the poem’s last twelve lines I count no
less than eleven such figures in a rhetorical tour de force.
We’d had more pleasure had our loves been less.
She blush’d and frown’d, perceiving we had done
The sport she thought we scarce had yet begun.
40
Alas, said I, condemn yourself, not me,
This is th’ effect of too much modesty.
Hence with that peevish virtue, the delight
Of both our victories was lost i’ the fight;
Yet from my shame your glory does arise, 45
My weakness proves the vigour of your eyes:
They did consume the victim ere it came
Unto the altar, with a purer flame:
Phyllis, let then this comfort ease your care,
You’d been more happy had you been less fair.
50
Here opposed are pleasure and
love, the blush (indicating acquiescence) and the frown (suggesting
resistance), finish and start, female and male, victory and loss, shame and
glory, weakness and strength, presence and absence, comfort and care, happiness
and beauty. All are natural or near
antonyms except the first and last, already prominent by position, which
thereby receive increased attention.
The neat wit of the concluding line caps a dazzling display of
conceptual manipulation in which the “pretty amorous discourse,” while
disrupted in the story’s imaginative world, is so adroitly managed on the page
that the potency of the poet is restored through his adept use of
language. What ends in railing for
Rochester, and in something like a painted screen in Behn, seems in Etherege
calculated, part of the set-up for a display of flashy one-liners.
Rochester found enough potential for
variation in the convention to write another poem titled “The Imperfect
Enjoyment.” This version is utterly
different in tone from its better-known namesake. Though the plot-line remains the same, the
persona in this piece never loses equipoise.
A rhetoric of balanced periods built of bipolar oppositions presents a
resolution in art and sound if not in lived experience.
The opening line might puzzle the modern
reader: “Fruition was the question in debate.”
At issue is the value of orgasm, often taken as the measure of sexual
success. For D. H. Lawrence and for
Norman Mailer in the twentieth century the pursuit of the perfect orgasm
acquired immense significance. Yet in
the seventeenth century a small subgenre of poems questioned the value of
coming to “fruition.” For Henry King,
for instance fruition is “the bane” that undoes love. [5]
Rochester seeks a “middle way,” in which sexual denial only heightens
pleasure and “feigned virtue” is “but a bawd to vice.” (8) Again eliding the greater hazard for women in
sexual indulgence, he treats his lover’s resistance as coyly coquettish, yet
cautions that it may end poorly with “the victor’s fate” being “to die at the
entrance of the op’ning gate” (37-38). He
accepts responsibility for the failure of the encounter yet, instead of angry
denunciations of his private parts, he adopts a cool position of sly wit.
But as a prodigal heir, I spent bye-the-bye,
What, home directed, would serve her and I.
(41-2)
The poem concludes with a plea for,
of all things, sexual mutuality and even a sort of temperance.
For love turns impotent, when strained too high;
His very cordials, make him sooner die,
Evaporates in fume the fire too great;
Love’s chemistry thrives best in equal heat.
(45-48)
Having traced an aggressive and
vituperative male voice, half-wild with the very idea of sex, self-obsessed and
pushed into transgressive language in Rochester, and a more elegant though also
more conflicted female voice in Behn, retreating behind the pastoral stage set,
the reader finds in Etherege a more poised and polished response to sexual
failure, and finally, in a return to Rochester, a measured and confident
compromise. If the anxieties of sexual
performance and the ambivalences of sexual relations in a patriarchal society
are not resolved, they seem to dissolve in the poise and polish of these
poems.
Through alterations in the timbre, as one
might say, of the poet’s rhetoric each has dismissed the problems of
male/female relations and of sexual ego in the way of art, much as a stage
magician will distract the viewer with a flourish of a scarlet handkerchief. Yet each transformation of the “imperfect
enjoyment” convention implies a specific attitude and values. The ranting anger of one poem by Rochester
corresponds to irritable frustration in mood and selfishness in love, justified
by what might be called faith in the importance and profundity of sexual
experience. Behn explores female ambivalence,
and illustrates the politic considerations she, and not he, must bear in
mind. Then in Etherege the reader
encounters the pleasure of structural play, similar to that experienced by
listeners to the Goldberg Variations. While the reader’s interest may be maintained
by the subject matter of love, the poet’s aim is less to comment on that topic
than to put together becoming structures of language. The second poem by Rochester presents the
theme well-digested, thoroughly processed by a progression of authors, the
rhetoric tired out by use, its possibilities plumbed, though the theme is
certain to return in new dress.
1.
The term was first used by Richard Quaintance in “French Sources of the
Restoration ‘Imperfect Enjoyment’ Poem,” Philological Quarterly Vol. 42,
No. 2, (Apr 1, 1963). The French models for such poems,
Quiaintance’s principal topic, is not part of the present inquiry.
2.
Amores 3.7 which was translated by Marlowe among others. While Ovid is by far the most important
influence, Petronius (Satyricon, 128-140) and Tibullus (I, 5) may play a
role as well.
3.
Impotence remains a common reason to suspect witchcraft in Africa
today. The fear of “penis-snatchers” is
one contemporary form of this suspicion.
4.
Martial provides a neat statement of the idea. “Do you ask what sort of maid I desire or
dislike, Flaccus? I dislike one too easy, and one too coy. The just mean, which
lies between the two extremes, is what I approve; I like neither that which
tortures, nor that which cloys.” (1,57 “To
Flaccus”)
5.
King’s “Paradox. That Fruition Destroyes Love” says
Fruition therefore is the bane t'undoe
Both our affection and the subject too.
'Tis Love into worse language to translate,
And make it into Lust degenerate.
Suckling wrote two poems against
fruition, and Aphra Behn “To Alexis in Answer to his Poem against Fruition.”
The Imperfect Enjoyment
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Naked she lay, clasped in my
longing arms,
I filled with love, and she all
over charms;
Both equally inspired with eager
fire,
Melting through kindness, flaming
in desire.
With arms, legs, lips close clinging
to embrace, [5]
She clips me to her breast, and
sucks me to her face.
Her nimble tongue, Love’s lesser
lightening, played
Within my mouth, and to my
thoughts conveyed
Swift orders that I should prepare
to throw
The all-dissolving
thunderbolt below. [10]
My fluttering soul, sprung with
the painted kiss,
Hangs hovering o’er her balmy
brinks of bliss.
But whilst her busy hand would
guide that part
Which
should convey my soul up to her heart,
In liquid raptures I dissolve all
o’er, [15]
Melt into sperm, and spend at
every pore.
A touch from any part of her had
done’t:
Her hand, her foot, her very
look’s a cunt.
Smiling, she chides in a kind
murmuring noise,
And from her body wipes the clammy
joys, [20]
When, with a thousand kisses
wandering o’er
My panting bosom, “Is there then
no more?"
She cries. “All this to love and
rapture’s due;
Must we not pay a debt to pleasure
too?"
But I, the most forlorn, lost man
alive, [25]
To show my wished obedience vainly
strive:
I sigh, alas! and kiss, but cannot
swive.
Eager desires confound my first
intent,
Succeeding shame does more success
prevent,
And rage at last confirms me
impotent. [30]
Ev’n her fair hand, which might
bid heat return
To frozen age, and make cold
hermits burn,
Applied to my dead cinder, warms
no more
Than fire to ashes could past
flames restore.
Trembling, confused, despairing,
limber, dry, [35]
A wishing, weak, unmoving lump I
lie.
This dart of love, whose piercing
point, oft tried,
With virgin blood ten thousand
maids have dyed;
Which nature still directed with
such art
That it through every cunt reached
every heart — [40]
Stiffly resolved, ’twould
carelessly invade
Woman or man, nor aught its fury
stayed:
Where’er it pierced, a cunt it
found or made —
Now languid lies in this unhappy
hour,
Shrunk up and sapless like a withered flower. [45]
Thou treacherous, base deserter of
my flame,
False to my passion, fatal to my
fame,
Through what mistaken magic dost
thou prove
So true to lewdness, so untrue to
love?
What oyster-cinder-beggar-common
whore [50]
Didst thou e’er fail in all thy
life before?
When vice, disease, and scandal
lead the way,
With what officious haste dost
thou obey!
Like a rude, roaring hector in the
streets
Who scuffles, cuffs, and justles
all he meets, [55]
But if his king or country claim
his aid,
The rakehell
villain shrinks and hides his head;
Ev’n so thy brutal valour is
displayed,
Breaks every stew, does each small
whore invade,
But when great Love the onset does
command, [60]
Base recreant to thy prince, thou
dar’st not stand.
Worst part of me, and henceforth
hated most,
Through all the town a common
fucking-post,
On whom each whore relieves her
tingling cunt
As hogs do rub themselves on gates
and grunt, [65]
May’st thou to ravenous chancres
be a prey,
Or in consuming weepings waste
away;
May strangury and stone thy days
attend;
May’st thou ne’er piss, who did
refuse to spend
When all my joys did on false thee
depend. [70]
And may ten thousand abler pricks agree
To do the wronged Corinna right for thee.
The Disappointment
Aphra Behn
1
ONE Day the Amarous Lisander,
By an impatient Passion sway’d,
Surpris’d fair Cloris, that lov’d
Maid,
Who cou’d defend her self no
longer ;
All things did with his Love
conspire,
The gilded Planet of the Day,
In his gay Chariot, drawn by Fire,
Was now descending to the Sea,
And left no Light to guide the
World,
But what from Cloris brighter Eyes
was hurl’d. 10
2
In alone Thicket, made for Love,
Silent as yielding Maids Consent,
She with a charming Languishment
Permits his force, yet gently
strove ?
Her Hands his Bosom softly meet,
But not to put him back design’d,
Rather to draw him on inclin’d,
Whilst he lay trembling at her
feet;
Resistance ’tis to late to shew,
She wants the pow’r to say — Ah! what
do you do? 20
3
Her bright Eyes sweat, and yet
Severe,
Where Love and Shame confus’dly
strive,
Fresh Vigor to Lisander give :
And whispring softly in his Ear,
She Cry’d — Cease — cease — your
vain desire,
Or I’ll call out — What wou’d you
do ?
My dearer Honour, ev’n to you,
I cannot — must not give — retire,
Or take that Life whose chiefest
part
I gave you with the Conquest of my
Heart. 30
4
But he as much unus’d to fear,
As he was capable of Love,
The blessed Minutes to improve,
Kisses her Lips, her Neck, her
Hair !
Each touch
her new Desires alarms !
His burning trembling Hand he
prest
Upon her melting Snowy Breast,
While she lay panting in his Arms
!
All her unguarded Beauties lie
The Spoils and Trophies of the
Enemy. 40
5
And now, without Respect or Fear,
He seeks the Objects of his Vows ;
His Love no Modesty allows :
By swift degrees advancing where
His daring Hand that Alter seiz’d,
Where Gods of Love do Sacrifice ;
That awful Throne, that Paradise,
Where Rage is tam’d, and Anger pleas’d
;
That Living Fountain, from whose
Trills
The melted Soul in liquid Drops
distils. 50
6
Her balmy Lips encountring his,
Their Bodies as their Souls are
joyn’d,
Where both in
Transports were confin’d,
Extend themselves upon the Moss.
Cloris half dead and breathless
lay,
Her Eyes appear’d like humid
Light,
Such as divides the Day and Night;
Or falling Stars, whose Fires
decay ;
And now no signs of Life she
shows, cont
But what in short-breath-sighs
returns and goes. 60
7
He saw how at her length she lay,
He saw her rising Bosom bare,
Her loose thin Robes, through
which appear
A Shape design’d for Love and
Play;
Abandon’d by her Pride and Shame,
She do’s her softest Sweets
dispence,
Offring her Virgin-Innocence
A Victim to Loves Sacred Flame ;
Whilst th’ or’e ravish’d Shepherd
lies,
Unable to perform the Sacrifice. 70
8
Ready to taste a Thousand Joys,
Thee too transported hapless
Swain,
Found the vast Pleasure turn’d to
Pain :
Pleasure,
which too much Love destroys !
The willing Garments by he laid,
And Heav’n all open to his view ;
Mad to possess, himself he threw
On the defenceless lovely Maid.
But oh ! what envious Gods
conspire
To snatch his Pow’r, yet leave him
the Desire ! 80
9
Natures support, without whose Aid
She can no humane Being give,
It self now wants the Art to live,
Faintness it slacken’d Nerves
invade :
In vain th’ enraged Youth assaid
To call his fleeting Vigour back,
No Motion ’twill from Motion take,
Excess of
Love his Love betray’d ;
In vain he Toils, in vain
Commands,
Th’ Insensible fell weeping in his
Hands. 90
10
In this so Am’rous cruel strife,
Where Love and Fate were too
severe,
The poor Lisander in Despair,
Renounc’d his Reason with his
Life.
Now all the Brisk and Active Fire
That should the Nobler Part
inflame,
Unactive Frigid, Dull became,
And left no Spark for new Desire ;
Not all her Naked Charms cou’d
move,
Or calm that Rage that had
debauch’d his Love. 100
11
Cloris returning from the Trance
Which Love and soft Desire had
bred,
Her tim’rous Hand she gently laid,
Or guided by Design or Chance,
Upon that Fabulous Priapus,
That Potent God (as Poets feign.)
But never did young Shepherdess
(Gath’ring of Fern upon the Plain)
More nimbly draw her Fingers back,
Finding beneath the Verdant Leaves
a Snake. 110
12
Then Cloris her fair Hand
withdrew,
Finding that God of her Desires
Disarm’d of all his pow’rful
Fires,
And cold as Flow’rs bath’d in the
Morning-dew.
Who can the Nymphs Confusion guess
?
The Blood forsook the kinder
place,
And strew’d with Blushes all her
Face,
Which both Disdain and Shame
express ;
And from Lisanders Arms she fled,
Leaving him fainting on the gloomy
Bed. 120
13
Like Lightning through the Grove
she hies,
Or Daphne from the Delphick God ;
No Print upon the Grassie Road
She leaves, t’ instruct pursuing
Eyes.
The Wind that wanton’d in her
Hair,
And with her ruffled Garments
plaid,
Discover’d in the flying Maid
All that the Gods e’re made of
Fair.
So Venus, when her Love was Slain,
With fear and haste flew o’re the
fatal Plain. 130
14
The Nymphs resentments, none but I
Can well imagin, and Condole ;
But none can guess Lisander‘s
Soul,
But those who sway’d his Destiny :
His silent Griefs, swell up to
Storms,
And not one God, his Fury spares,
He Curst his Birth, his Fate, his
Stars,
But more the Shepherdesses Charms
;
Whose soft bewitching influence,
Had Damn’d him to the Hell of
Impotence. 140
The Imperfect Enjoyment
Sir George Etherege
AFTER a pretty amorous discourse,
She does resist my love with
pleasing force;
Moved not with anger, but with
modesty,
Against her will she is my enemy.
Her eyes the rudeness of her arms
excuse, 5
Whilst those accept what these
seem to refuse;
To ease my passion and to make me
blest
The obliging smock falls from her
whiter breast.
Then with her lovely hands she
does conceal
Those wonders chance so kindly did
reveal. 10
In vain, alas! her nimble fingers
strove
To shield her beauties from my
greedy love:
Guarding her breasts, her lips she
did expose,
To save a lily she must lose a
rose.
So many charms she has in every
place, 15
A hundred hands cannot defend each
grace.
Sighing at length her force she
does recall,
For since I must have part she’ll
give me all.
Her arms the joyful conqueror
embrace,
And seem to guide me to the
sought-for place: 20
Her love is in her sparkling eyes
express’d,
She falls o’ the bed for pleasure
more than rest.
But oh, strange passion! oh,
abortive joy!
My zeal does my devotion quite
destroy:
Come to the temple where I should
adore 25
My saint, I worship at the sacred
door;
Oh, cruel chance! the town which
did oppose
My strength so long, now yields to
my dispose;
When overjoy’d with victory I fall
Dead at the foot of the
surrender’d wall, 30
Without the usual ceremony, we
Have both fulfilled the amorous
mystery;
The action which we should have
jointly done,
Each has unluckily perform’d
alone;
The union which our bodies should
enjoy, 35
The union of our eager souls
destroy.
Our flames
are punish’d by their own excess,
We’d had more pleasure had our
loves been less.
She blush’d and frown’d,
perceiving we had done
The sport she thought we scarce
had yet begun. 40
Alas, said I, condemn yourself,
not me,
This is th’ effect of too much
modesty.
Hence with that peevish virtue,
the delight
Of both our victories was lost i’
the fight;
Yet from my shame your glory does
arise, 45
My weakness proves the vigour of
your eyes:
They did consume the victim ere it
came
Unto the altar, with a purer
flame:
Phyllis, let then this comfort
ease your care,
You’d been more happy had you been
less fair. 50
The Imperfect Enjoyment
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Fruition was the question in
debate,
Which like so hot a casuist I
state,
That she my freedom urged as my
offense
To teach my reason to subdue my
sense;
But yet this angry cloud, that did
proclaim 5
Volleys of thunder, melted into
rain;
And this adult’rate stamp of
seeming nice,
Made feigned
virtue but a bawd to vice;
For, by a compliment that’s seldom
known,
She thrusts me out, and yet
invites me home; 10
And these denials, but advance
delight,
As prohibition sharpens appetite;
For the kind curtain raising my
esteem,
To wonder as the opening of the
scene,
When of her breast her hands the
guardians were, 15
Yet I salute each sullen officer:
Tho’ like the flaming sword before
my eyes,
They block the passage to my
paradise;
Nor could those tyrant-hands so
guard the coin,
But love, where’t cannot purchase,
may purloin: 20
For tho’ her breasts are hid, her
lips are prize,
To make me rich beyond my avarice;
Yet my ambition my affection fed,
To conquer both the white rose and
the red.
The event proved true, for on the
bed she sate 25
And seemed to court what she had
seemed to hate;
Heat of resistance had increased
her fire,
And weak defense is turned to
strong desire.
What unkind influence could
interspose,
When two such stars did in
conjunction close? 30
Only too hasty zeal my hopes did
foil,
Pressing to feed her lamp, I spilt
my oil;
And that which most reproach upon
me hurled,
Was dead to her, gives life to all
the world,
Nature’s chief prop, and motion’s
primest source, 35
In me lost both their figure and
their force.
Sad conquest! When it is the
victor’s fate,
To die at the entrance of the
op’ning gate:
Like prudent corporations had we
laid
A common stock by, we’d improved
our trade; 40
But as a prodigal heir, I spent
bye-the-bye,
What, home directed, would serve
her and I.
When next in such assaults I
chance to be,
Give me less vigour, more
activity;
For love
turns impotent, when strained too high;
45
His
very cordials, make him sooner die,
Evaporates
in fume the fire too great;
Love’s
chemistry thrives best in equal heat.
