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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=454929" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Love: An Elegy</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Too much my heart of Beauty's power hath known,<br>Too long to Love hath reason left her throne;<br>Too long my genius mourn'd his myrtle chain,<br>And three rich years of youth consum'd in vain.<br>My wishes, lull'd with soft inglorious dreams,<br>Forgot the patriot's and the sage's themes:<br>Through each Elysian vale and fairy grove,<br>Through all the enchanted paradise of love,<br>Misled by sickly hope's deceitful flame,<br>Averse to action, and renouncing fame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At last the visionary scenes decay,<br>My eyes, exulting, bless the new-born day,<br>Whose faithful beams detect the dangerous road<br>In which my heedless feet securely trod,<br>And strip the phantoms of their lying charms<br>That lur'd my soul from Wisdom's peaceful arms.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For silver streams and banks bespread with flowers,<br>For mossy couches and harmonious bowers,<br>Lo! barren heaths appear, and pathless woods,<br>And rocks hung dreadful o'er unfathom'd floods:<br>For openness of heart, for tender smiles,<br>Looks fraught with love, and wrath-disarming wiles;<br>Lo! sullen Spite, and perjur'd Lust of Gain,<br>And cruel Pride, and crueller Disdain;<br>Lo! cordial Faith to idiot airs refin'd,<br>Now coolly civil, now transporting kind.<br>For graceful Ease, lo! Affectation walks;<br>And dull Half-sense, for Wit and Wisdom talks.<br>New to each hour what low delight succeeds,<br>What precious furniture of hearts and heads!<br>By nought their prudence, but by getting, known,<br>And all their courage in deceiving shown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">See next what plagues attend the lover's state,<br>What frightful forms of Terror, Scorn, and Hate!<br>See burning Fury heaven and earth defy!<br>See Dumb Despair in icy fetters lie!<br>See black Suspicion bend his gloomy brow,<br>The hideous image of himself to view!<br>And fond Belief, with all a lover's flame,<br>Sink in those arms that point his head with shame!<br>There wan Dejection, faltering as he goes,<br>In shades and silence vainly seeks repose;<br>Musing through pathless wilds, consumes the day,<br>Then lost in darkness weeps the hours away.<br>Here the gay crowd of Luxury advance,<br>Some touch the lyre, and others urge the dance;<br>On every head the rosy garland glows,<br>In every hand the golden goblet flows<br>The Syren views them with exulting eyes,<br>And laughs at bashful Virtue as she flies.<br>But see behind, where Scorn and Want appear,<br>The grave remonstrance and the witty sneer;<br>See fell Remorse in action, prompt to dart<br>Her snaky poison through the conscious heart;<br>And Sloth to cancel, with oblivious shame,<br>The fair memorial of recording Fame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Are these delights that one would wish to gain?<br>Is this the Elysium of a sober brain?<br>To wait for happiness in female smiles,<br>Bear all her scorn, be caught with all her wiles,<br>With prayers, with bribes, with lies, her pity crave,<br>Bless her hard bonds, and boast to be her slave;<br>To feel, for trifles, a distracting train<br>Of hopes and terrors equally in vain;<br>This hour to tremble, and the next to glow,<br>Can Pride, can Sense, can Reason, stoop so low?<br>When Virtue, at an easier price, displays<br>The sacred wreaths of honourable praise;<br>When Wisdom utters her divine decree,<br>To laugh at pompous Folly, and be free.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I bid adieu, then, to these woful scenes;<br>I bid adieu to all the sex of queens;<br>Adieu to every suffering, simple soul,<br>That lets a woman's will his ease control.<br>There laugh, ye witty; and rebuke, ye grave!<br>For me, I scorn to boast that I'm a slave.<br>I bid the whining brotherhood be gone:<br>Joy to my heart! my wishes are my own!<br>Farewell the female heaven, the female hell;<br>To the great God of Love a glad farewell.<br>Is this the triumph of thy awful name?<br>Are these the splendid hopes that urg'd thy aim,<br>When first my bosom own'd thy haughty sway?<br>When thus Minerva heard thee boasting, say,<br>“Go, martial maid, elsewhere thy arts employ,<br>Nor hope to shelter that devoted boy,<br>Go teach the solemn sons of Care and Age,<br>The pensive statesman, and the midnight sage:<br>The young with me must other lessons prove,<br>Youth calls for Pleasure, Pleasure calls for Love.<br>Behold, his heart thy grave advice disdains;<br>Behold, I bind him in eternal chains.”<br>Alas! great Love, how idle was the boast!<br>Thy chains are broken, and thy lessons lost;<br>Thy wilful rage has tir'd my suffering heart,<br>And passion, reason, forc'd thee to depart.<br>But wherefore dost thou linger on thy way?<br>Why vainly search for some pretence to stay,<br>When crowds of vassals court thy pleasing yoke,<br>And countless victims bow them to the stroke?<br>Lo! round thy shrine a thousand youths advance,<br>Warm with the gentle ardours of romance;<br>Each longs to assert thy cause with feats of arms,<br>And make the world confess Dulcinea's charms.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ten thousand girls with flowery chaplets crown'd,<br>To groves and streams thy tender triumph sound:<br>Each bids the stream in murmurs speak her flame,<br>Each calls the grove to sigh her shepherd's name.<br>But, if thy pride such easy honour scorn,<br>If nobler trophies must thy toil adorn,<br>Behold yon flowery antiquated maid<br>Bright in the bloom of threescore years display'd;<br>Her shalt thou bind in thy delightful chains,<br>And thrill with gentle pangs her wither'd veins,<br>Her frosty cheek with crimson blushes dye,<br>With dreams of rapture melt her maudlin eye.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Turn then thy labours to the servile crowd,<br>Entice the wary, and control the proud;<br>Make the sad miser his best gains forego,<br>The solemn statesman sigh to be a beau,<br>The bold coquette with fondest passions burn,<br>The Bacchanalian o'er his bottle mourn;<br>And that chief glory of thy power maintain,<br>“To poise ambition in a female brain.”<br>Be these thy triumphs; but no more presume<br>That my rebellious heart will yield thee room:<br>I know thy puny force, thy simple wiles;<br>I break triumphant through thy flimsy toils;<br>I see thy dying lamp's last languid glow,<br>Thy arrows blunted and unbrac'd thy bow.<br>I feel diviner fires my breast inflame,<br>To active science, and ingenuous fame;<br>Resume the paths my earliest choice began,<br>And lose, with pride, the lover in the man.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Mark+Akenside">Mark Akenside</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=454929" data-title="Love: An Elegy de Mark Akenside" data-description="Too much my heart of Beauty's power hath known,
Too long to Love hath reason left her throne;
Too long my genius mourn'd his myrtle chain,
And three rich years of youth consum'd in vain.
My wishes, lull'd with soft inglorious dreams,
Forgot the pa..."></div>
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