Practical Guide to English Versification / With a Compendious Dictionary of Rhymes, an Examination / of Classical Measures, and Comments Upon Burlesque and / Comic Verse, Vers de Société, and Song-writing

by Tom Hood

Pleasures shorter than the Day?

Could we, which we never can,

Stretch our Lives beyond their Span,

Beauty like a Shadow flies,

And our Youth before us dies.

Or would Youth and Beauty stay,

Love has Wings, and will away.

Love has swifter Wings than Time."

But the second verse of the couplet does not always contain a like number of syllables with the first; as,

"What shall I do to be for ever known,