It wanders about, without stirring out;
No passion so weak but gives it a tweak;
Love, joy, and devotion, set it always in motion.
And as for the tragick effects of its magick,
When you say it can kill, or revive at its will,
The dead are all sound, and the live above ground:
After all you have writ, it cannot be wit;
Which plainly does follow, since it flies from Apollo.
Its cowardice such, it cries at a touch;
'Tis a perfect milksop, grows drunk with a drop.
Another great fault, it cannot bear salt:
And a hair can disarm it of every charm.
FROM India's burning clime I'm brought,
With cooling gales like zephyrs fraught.
Nor Iris, when she paints the sky,
Can show more different hues than I;
Nor can she change her form so fast,
I'm now a sail, and now a mast.
I here am red, and there am green,
A beggar there, and here a queen.
I sometimes live in house of hair,
And oft in hand of lady fair.
I please the young, I grace the old,
And am at once both hot and cold.
Say what I am then, if you can,
And find the rhyme, and you're the man.
AN-
