They were but my visits, but thou art my home!
Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war,
And let us like Horace and Lydia agree;
For thou art a girl as much brighter than her,
As he was a poet sublimer than me.
If Prior read Horace, did not Thomas Moore study Prior? Love and pleasure find singers in all days. Roses are always blowing and fading—to-day as in that pretty time when Prior sang of them, and of Chloe lamenting their decay—
She sighed, she smiled, and to the flowers
Pointing, the lovely moralist said;
See, friend, in some few leisure hours,
See yonder what a change is made!