Or, if more influencing
Is to be brisk and airy,
With a step and a bound,
With a frisk from the ground, 10
I'll trip like any fairy.
As once on Ida dancing
Were three celestial bodies:
With an air, and a face,
And a shape, and a grace, 15
I'll charm, like beauty's goddess.
Ah! 'tis in vain! 'tis all, 'tis all in vain!
Death and despair must end the fatal pain:
Cold, cold despair, disguis'd like snow and rain,
Falls on my breast; bleak winds in tempests blow;
My veins all shiver, and my fingers glow: 21
My pulse beats a dead march for lost repose,
And to a solid lump of ice my poor fond heart is froze.
Or say, ye powers, my peace to crown,
Shall I thaw myself, and drown 25
Among the foaming billows?
Increasing all with tears I shed,
On beds of ooze, and crystal pillows,
Lay down, lay down my lovesick head?
No, no, I'll strait run mad, mad, mad, 30
That soon my heart will warm;
When once the sense is fled, is fled,
Love has no power to charm.
Wild thro' the woods I'll fly, I'll fly,
Robes, locks——shall thus——be tore! 35
A thousand, thousand times I'll dye
Ere thus, thus, in vain,—ere thus in vain adore.
XXI.
THE DISTRACTED LOVER,
Mad Song the Fifth,
Was written by Henry Carey, a celebrated composer of music at the beginning of this century, and author of several little Theatrical Entertainments, which the reader may find enumerated in the Companion to the Play-house, &c. The sprightliness of this songster's fancy could not preserve him from a very melancholy catastrophe, which was effected by his own hand. In his Poems, 4to. Lond. 1729, may be seen another Mad-Song of this author, beginning thus: