How bless'd are lovers in disguise!
Like gods, they see,
As I do thee,
Unseen by human eyes.
Exposed to view,
I'm hid from view,
I'm altered, yet the same:
The dark conceals me,
Love reveals me:
Love, which lights me by its flame.
Were you not false, you would me know;
For though your eyes
Could not devise,
Your heart had told you so.
Your heart would beat
With eager heat,
And me by sympathy would find:
True love might see,
One changed like me,
False love is only blind.
George Farquhar.
WHEN THY BEAUTY APPEARS.
When thy beauty appears
In its graces and airs,
All bright as an angel new dropt from the sky;
At a distance I gaze, and am aw'd by my fears,
So strangely you dazzle my eye!
But then, without art,
Your kind thought you impart,
When your love runs in blushes through every vein;
When it darts from your eyes, when it pants in your heart,
Then I know you're a woman again.
There's a passion and pride
In our sex, she replied,
And thus, might I gratify both, would I do:
Still an angel appear to each lover beside,
But still be a woman to you.
Thomas Parnell.