Grudge not this short relief, (too fast it flies)
Nor chide that weakness I myself despise.
One moment sure may be at least her due,
Who sacrifised her all of life for you.
Without a frown this farewel then receive,
For, 'tis the last my hapless love shall give;
Nor this I would, if reason could command,
But what restriction reins a lover's hand?

Nor prudence, shame, nor pride, nor interest

sways,

The hand implicitly the heart obeys:

Too well this maxim has my conduct shewn,
Too well that conduct to the world is known.

Oft have I writ, and often to the flame
Condemn'd this after-witness of my shame;
Oft in my cooler recollected thought,
Thy beauties, and my fondness half forgot,
(How short those intervals for reason's aid !)
Thus to myself in anguish have I said.

Thy vain remonstrance, foolish maid, give o'er;
Who act the wrong, can ne'er that
wrong deplore.
Then sanguine hopes again delusive reign,
I form thee melting, as I tell my pain.
If not of rock thy flinty heart is made,
Nor tygers nursed thee in the desert shade,

Let me at least thy cold compassion prove,
That slender sustenance of greedy love :
Tho' no return my warmer wishes find,

Be to the wretch, tho' not the mistress, kind ;
Nor whilst I court my melancholy state,

Forget 'twas love, and thee, that wrought my fate.

Without restraint habituate to range

The paths of pleasure, can I bear this change?
Doom'd from the world unwilling to retire,
In bloom of life, and warm with young desire,
In lieu of roofs with regal splendor gay
Condemn'd in distant wilds to drag the day;
Where beasts of prey maintain their savage

court,

Or human brutes (the worst of brutes) resort.
Yes, yes, the change I could unsighing see,
For none I mourn, but what I find in thee;
There center all my woes, thy heart estranged,
I weep my lover, not my fortune, changed,
Blest with thy presence I could all forget,
Nor gilded palaces in huts regret,
But exiled thence, superfluous is the rest,
Each place the same, my hell is in my breast,
To pleasure dead, and living but to pain,
My only sense to suffer, and complain.

As all my wrongs distressful I repeat,

Say, can thy pulse with equal cadence beat?
Caust thou know peace? is conscience mute within ?
That upright delegate for secret sin;

Is nature so extinguish'd in thy heart,

That not one spark remains to take my part?
Not one repentent throb, one grateful sigh?

Thy breast unruffled, and unwet thy eye?
Thou cool betrayer, temperate in ill!

Thou nor remorse, nor thought humane canst feel:
Nature has formed thee of the rougher kind,
And education more debased thy mind;
Born in an age when guilt and fraud prevail,
When Justice sleeps, and Interest holds the scale ;
Thy loose companions a licentious crew,
Most, to each other, all, to us untrue,

Whom chance, or habit mix, but rarely choice,
Not leagued in friendship, but in social vice,
Who indigent of honour, or of shame,
Glory in crimes which others blush to name;
By right or wrong disdaining to be moved,
Unprincipled, unloving, and unloved.

The fair who trusts their prosituted vows,
If not their falsehood, still their boasts expose;
Nor knows the wisest to elude the harm,
Ev'n she whose prudence shuns the tinsel charm
They know to slander, though they fail to warm a

They make her languish in fictitious flame,
Affix some specious slander on her name,

And baffled by her virtue, triumph o'er her fame.

These are the leaders of thy blinded youth,
These vile seducers laughed thee out of truth;
Whose scurrile jests all solemn ties profane,
Or Friendship's band, or Hymen's sacred chain;
Morality as weakness they upbraid,

Nor even revere Religion's hallowed head;
Alike they spurn divine and human laws,
And treat the honest like the Christian cause.
Curse on that tongue whose vile pernicious art
Delights the ear but to corrupt the heart,
That takes advantage of the chearful hour,
When weaken'd Virtue bends to Nature's power,
And would the goodness of the soul efface,
To substitute dishonour in her place.

With such you lose the day in false delights,
In lewd debauch you revel out the nights,
(O fatal commerce to Monimia's peace !)
Their arguments convince because they please;
Whilst sophistry for reason they admit,
And wander dazzled by the glare of wit,
Wit, that on ill a specious lustre throws,

And in false colours every object shows,

That gilds the wrong, depreciating the right, And hurts the judgment, while it feasts the sight: So in a prism to the deluded eye,

Each pictured trifle takes a rainbow dye,

With borrow'd charms the shining prospect glows,
And truth reversed the faithless mirror shows,
Inverted scenes in bright confusion lie,
The lawns impending o'er the nether sky;
No just, no real images we meet,
But all the gaudy vision is deceit.

Oft I revolve in this distracted mind

Each word, each look, that spoke my charmer kind;

But oh! how dear their memory I pay !

What pleasures past can present cares allay ?

Of all I love for ever dispossest;

Ah! what avails to think I once was blest ;
Hard disposition of unequal fate!

Mixed are our joys, and transient are their date ;

Nor can reflection bring them back again,
Yet brings an after-sting to ev'ry pain.

Thy fatal letters, oh! immoral youth,
Those perjured pledges of fictitious truth,
Dear as they were, no second joy afford,
My cred❜lous heart once leap'd at every word,