But he at length beholds me - “Ah! my friend!
“And have thy pleasures this unlucky end?”
“Too sure,” he said, and smiling as he sigh’d;
“I went astray, though Prudence seem’d my guide;
All she proposed I in my heart approved,
And she was honour’d, but my pleasure loved -
Pleasure, the mistress to whose arms I fled,
From wife-like lectures angry Prudence read.
“Why speak the madness of a life like mine,
The powers of beauty, novelty, and wine?