Yet since the solemn time allows
To choose the object of our vows;
Boldly I dare profess my flame,
Proud to be yours by any name.
A better might have been selected from the “Magazine of Magazines,” the “Gentleman’s,” wherein Mr. Urban has sometimes introduced the admirers of ladies to the admirers of antiquities—under which class ladies never come. Thence, ever and anon, as from some high barbican or watchtower old, “songs of loves and maids forsaken,” have aroused the contemplation from “facts, fancies, and recollections” regarding other times, to lovers “sighing like furnace” in our own. Through Sylvanus, nearly a century ago, there was poured this
Invocation of St. Valentine.
Haste, friendly Saint! to my relief,
My heart is stol’n, help! stop the thief!
My rifled breast I search’d with care,
And found Eliza lurking there.
Away she started from my view,
Yet may be caught, if thou pursue;
Nor need I to describe her strive—
The fairest, dearest maid alive!
Seize her—yet treat the nymph divine
With gentle usage, Valentine!
Then, tell her, she, for what was done,
Must bring my heart, and give her own.
So pleasant, so descriptive an illustration of the present custom, requires a companion equally amiable:
MY VALENTINE.
Mark’d you her eye’s resistless glance,
That does the enraptur’d soul entrance?
Mark’d you that dark blue orb unfold
Volumes of bliss as yet untold?
And felt you not, as I now feel,
Delight no tongue could e’er reveal?
Mark’d you her cheek that blooms and glows
A living emblem of the rose?
Mark’d you her vernal lip that breathes
The balmy fragrance of its leaves?
And felt you not, as I now feel,
Delight no tongue can e’er reveal?