_Sylvia_ shall command with a frown, and fetter me with a smile; prescribe rules to my longing, ravish’d eyes, and pinion my busy, fond, roving hands, and lay at her feet, like a tame slave, her adoring PHILANDER. * * * * * _To_ PHILANDER. Approach, approach, you sacred Queen of Night, and bring _Philander_ veil’d from all eyes but mine; approach at a fond lover’s call, behold how I lie panting with expectation, tir’d out with your tedious ceremony to the God of Day; be kind, oh lovely night, and let the deity descend to his beloved _Thetis_’. arms, and I to my _Philander_’.; the sun and I must snatch our joys in the same happy hours; favour’d by thee, oh sacred, silent Night! See, see, the enamour’d sun is hasting on apace to his expecting mistress, while thou dull Night art slowly lingering yet. Advance, my friend! my goddess! and my confidante! hide all my blushes, all my soft confusions, my tremblings, transports, and eyes all languishing. Oh _Philander_! a thousand things I have done to divert the tedious hours, but nothing can; all things are dull without thee. I am tir’d with every thing, impatient to end, as soon as I begin them; even the shades and solitary walks afford me now no ease, no satisfaction, and thought but afflicts me more, that us’d to relieve. And I at last have recourse to my kind pen: for while I write, methinks I am talking to thee; I tell thee thus my soul, while thou, methinks, art all the while smiling and listening by; this is much easier than silent thought, and my soul is never weary of this converse; and thus I would speak a thousand things, but that still, methinks, words do not enough express my soul; to understand that right, there requires looks; there is a rhetoric in looks; in sighs and silent touches that surpasses all; there is an accent in the sound of words too, that gives a sense and soft meaning to little things, which of themselves are of trivial value, and insignificant; and by the cadence of the utterance may express a tenderness which their own meaning does not bear; by this I wou’d insinuate, that the story of the heart cannot be so well told by this way, as by presence and conversation; sure _Philander_ understands what I mean by this, which possibly is nonsense to all but a lover, who apprehends all the little fond prattle of the thing belov’d, and finds an eloquence in it, that to a sense unconcern’d would appear even approaching to folly: but _Philander_, who has the true notions of love in him, apprehends all that can be said on that dear subject; to him I venture to say any thing, whose kind and soft imaginations can supply all my wants in the description of the soul: will it not, _Philander_? Answer me:--But oh, where art thou? I see thee not, I touch thee not; but when I haste with transport to embrace thee, ‘tis shadow all, and my poor arms return empty to my bosom: why, oh why com’st thou not? Why art thou cautious, and prudently waitest