'Twas this made vestal maids love-sick,
And venture to be buried quick.[1]
Some, by their fathers and their brothers,[2]
To be made mistresses, and mothers;[3]
'Tis this that proudest dames enamours 405
On lacqueys, and varlets-des-chambres;[4]
Their haughty stomachs overcomes,
And makes 'em stoop to dirty grooms,
To slight the world, and to disparage
Claps, issue, infamy, and marriage.[5]410
Quoth she, These judgments are severe,
Yet such as I should rather bear,
Than trust men with their oaths, or prove
Their faith and secrecy in love.
Says he, There is a weighty reason 415
For secrecy in love as treason.
Love is a burglarer, a felon,
That in the windore-eye[6] does steal in
To rob the heart, and, with his prey,
Steals out again a closer way, 420
Which whosoever can discover,
He's sure, as he deserves, to suffer.
Love is a fire, that burns and sparkles
In men, as naturally as in charcoals,
Which sooty chemists stop in holes, 425
When out of wood they extract coals;[7]
So lovers should their passions choke,
That tho' they burn, they may not smoke.
- ↑ By the Roman law vestal virgins, who broke their vow of chastity, were buried alive. See the story of Myrrha in Ovid. Metam. (Bohn's Ovid's M. p. 359).
- ↑ The marriage of brothers and sisters was common amongst royal families in Egypt and the East.
- ↑ Probably alluding to Lucretia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI., whom Roscoe (Leo X. App.) has attempted to defend against these charges.
- ↑ Varlet is the old form of valet. Thus knave, which now signifies a cheat, formerly meant no more than a servant.
- ↑ That is, to be indifferent to the consequences of illicit amours; the absence of marriage and legitimate offspring on the one hand, and the acquisition of claps and infamy on the other.
- ↑ Thus spelt in all editions before 1700 for "window," and perhaps most agreeably to the etymology, See Skinner.
- ↑ Charcoal is made by burning wood under a cover of turf and mould, which keeps it from blazing.
