Jonathan Swift: A Love Song In The Modern Taste

A Love Song
In The Modern Taste

Fluttering spread thy purple pinions,
Gentle Cupid, o’er my heart:
I a slave in thy dominions;
Nature must give way to art.

Mild Arcadians, ever blooming
Nightly nodding o’er your flocks,
See my weary days consuming
All beneath yon flowery rocks.

Thus the Cyprian goddess weeping
Mourn’d Adonis, darling youth;
Him the boar, in silence creeping,
Gored with unrelenting tooth.

Cynthia, tune harmonious numbers;
Fair Discretion, string the lyre;
Sooth my ever-waking slumbers:
Bright Apollo, lend thy choir.

Gloomy Pluto, king of terrors,
Arm’d in adamantine chains,
Lead me to the crystal mirrors,
Watering soft Elysian plains.

Mournful cypress, verdant willow,
Gilding my Aurelia’s brows,
Morpheus, hovering o’er my pillow,
Hear me pay my dying vows.

Melancholy smooth Meander,
Swiftly purling in a round,
On thy margin lovers wander,
With thy flowery chaplets crown’d.

Thus when Philomela drooping
Softly seeks her silent mate,
See the bird of Juno stooping;
Melody resigns to fate.

Jonathan Swift
(1667 – 1745)
A Love Song
In The Modern Taste
1733

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

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