Song

BY APHRA BEHN

O Love! that stronger art than wine,
Pleasing delusion, witchery divine,
Wont to be prized above all wealth,
Disease that has more joys than health;
Though we blaspheme thee in our pain,
And of thy tyranny complain,
We are all bettered by they reign.
    
What reason never can bestow
We to this useful passion owe;
Love wakes the dull from sluggish ease,
And learns a clown the art to please,
Humbles the vain, kindles the cold,
Makes misers free, and cowards bold;
’Tis he reforms the sot from drink,
And teaches airy fops to think.

When full brute appetite is fed,
And choked the glutton lies and dead,
Thou new spirits dost dispense
And ’finest the gross delights of sense:
Virtue’s unconquerable aid
That against Nature can persuade,
And makes a roving mind retire
Within the bounds of just desire;
Cheerer of age, youth’s kind unrest,
And half the heaven of the blest!

(From) To Alexis In Answer to His Poem Against Fruition

BY APHRA BEHN

Since man with that inconstancy was born,
To love the absent, and the present scorn
    Why do we deck, why do we dress
    For such short-lived happiness?
    Why do we put attraction on,
Since either way ’tis we must be undone?

    They fly if honour take our part,
    Our virtue drives ’em o’er the field.
    We love ’em by too much desert,
    And oh! they fly us if we yield.
Ye gods! is there no charm in all the fair
To fix this wild, this faithless wanderer?

Love's Witness

BY APHRA BEHN

Slight unpremeditated Words are borne
    By every common Wind into the Air;
Carelessly utter’d, die as soon as born,
    And in one instant give both Hope and Fear:
Breathing all Contraries with the same Wind
According to the Caprice of the Mind.

But Billetdoux are constant Witnesses,
    Substantial Records to Eternity;
Just Evidences, who the Truth confess,
    On which the Lover safely may rely;
They’re serious Thoughts, digested and resolv’d;
And last, when Words are into Clouds devolv’d.