Wou’d own, perchance, a Sympathy of Heart.
The growing Passion impotent to quell,
Severe Discretion urg’d me to retreat;
Now at my native rural Home I dwell,
Where Contemplation keeps her lonely seat.
Seek not to draw me from this still abode,
Where the kind Muses to my Aid repair,
And when the Thoughts of hapless Love corrode
Check the deep Sigh, and wipe the trickling Tear.
This is given from the original quarto; there have been numerous reprints, all containing considerable variations from the above, which it would be alike tedious and unnecessary to enumerate. One version, and perhaps the best known, is to be found in The Repository, Vol. 2, London, 1777.