Curate.—Ad Lesbiam.
Love we, live we, Lesbia, proving
Love in living, life in loving,
For all the saws of sages caring
Not one single penny’s paring.
Suns can rise again from setting,
But our short light,
Once sunk in night,
Sleeps a slumber all forgetting:
Give me then a thousand kisses,
Still a hundred little blisses—
Yet a thousand—yet five score,
Yet a thousand, hundred more.
Then, when we have made too many
Thousands, we’ll confound them all,
So as not to know of any
Number, either great or small;
Or lest some caitiff grudge our blisses
When he knows the tale of kisses——
Gratian.—Tale is an ambiguous word, “Kiss and tell” is not fair play—Tale, talley, number. I hope it will be so understood at first reading.—It reminds me of the critical controversy respecting a passage in “L’Allegro,”—
“And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.”
The unsusceptible critic maintained that the shepherd did but count, or take the tale of his sheep. Why not avoid the ambiguity thus—a hasty emendation.
“Knowing our amount of kisses.”
Aquilius.—In the other sense, it will go sadly against him, if Miss Prate-apace should be a listener—she would like to have all the telling to herself.
Gratian.—Doubtless, and matter to tell of too—but, as I suppose that paper in your hand is your translation of this common-property bit of Latin, read it.
Aquilius.—Here it is.
ad lesbiam.