OF TEMPER.
15
The voice, that health made harmony, disowns
That native charm for languor's mimic tones:
And feigns disease, till, feeling what it feigns,
Its fancied maladies are real pain
Such, and a thousand still superior woes,
From Spleen's new empire o'er the earth arose:
Each simple dictate of the soul forgot,
Then first was form'd the mercenary plot;
And Beauty practis'd the pernicious art,
Of angling slyly for an old man's heart;
Tho' crawling to his bride with tottering knees,
His words were dotage, and his love disease.
From sex to sex this base contagion ran,
And gold grew beauty in the eyes of man:
Courtship was traffic: and the married life
But one loud jangle of incessant strife.
The gentle Sprite, who on his radiant car,
Shines the mild regent of the evening star,
And joys from thence those genial rays to shed,
That lead the bridegroom to the nuptial bed,
That native charm for languor's mimic tones:
And feigns disease, till, feeling what it feigns,
Its fancied maladies are real pain
Such, and a thousand still superior woes,
From Spleen's new empire o'er the earth arose:
Each simple dictate of the soul forgot,
Then first was form'd the mercenary plot;
And Beauty practis'd the pernicious art,
Of angling slyly for an old man's heart;
Tho' crawling to his bride with tottering knees,
His words were dotage, and his love disease.
From sex to sex this base contagion ran,
And gold grew beauty in the eyes of man:
Courtship was traffic: and the married life
But one loud jangle of incessant strife.
The gentle Sprite, who on his radiant car,
Shines the mild regent of the evening star,
And joys from thence those genial rays to shed,
That lead the bridegroom to the nuptial bed,
